Private Before The Slumber

[Maple Harte]

Wearing: Maple Harte's Armor

Armed with: Staff

Shadow Proclamation

Adhesive Grenades

Came to Jutrand in: The Silent Erika


007 Hours Prior...

Nar Shaddaa

Maple Harte ran for her life from the heavy grenade lobbed at her from above. The Mandalorian in dark green armor with a yellow tinted, T-shaped visor cackled as he chased the quickly running Maple aboard a bat-shaped glider with repulsorlifts and an ion engine in the back. The contraption was insane, Maple thought, diving through a window to evade a set of large Rodian throwing razors hurled at her. Then she had to out run his onboard continuous laser which burned through the building materials as she dived down a set of stairs in her black and white armor, the laser following her, or trying to as she dived out another window, firing her wrist mounted grappler to a nearby building, letting herself fall a certain way with the grapple cord to avoid dislocating her arms when it went taut using the momentum to swing upward, just in time to dodge the laser that issued forth from his combat glider, and barely make it to the edge of a roof before he fired a rocket from the glider.

Only Maple's reflexes allowed her to draw her pistol and shoot the rocket in, time, the wake still caught her flinging her across the roof top. The armor took it though, thankfully...

Maple struggled back up, winded as The Mandalorian floated atop his glider, another heavy, round looking orange grenade in his hands.

"You are a fool to antagonize a member of Clan Ozz." The Mandalorian hissed.

"You are worth twenty thousand credits for what you helped the First Order do at the Invasion of Coruscant."

"Lady, there's sooooo much more I've done to others without invasions as a pretense. You mean to tell me you came all this way just for an invasion literally everyone except you and a handful of others have moved on from? For a measly twenty thousand? I'd pay you TWICE that to feth off...if I was a weakling that is."

"You 'are' a weakling, Mandalorian. Why don't you prove me wrong by taking me without the Glider?"

"The trash thinks to muster a challenge..." The Mandalorian hissed, helmet and glove controls plotting a trajectory to her already. "I'll take your head, Bounty Killer."

He rocketed towards her, throwing a grenade and firing the laser on his glider.

Maple drew her pistol and fired at the grenade, and the explosion ripped the sky above for a moment, the wake hitting the Mandalorian and knocking his glider laser wide of the mark, and causing him to impact into a nearby skyscraper, where he almost lost balance and fell off.

Maple had fired her wrist grapple cord at his glider, tagging one of the wings he stood on as he dislodged himself from the impact crater on the building, glider's back engine sputtering back to life.

He saw Maple rocketing upward via the cord to him, tackling him and punching him even as his glider took off.

He cried out in pain as her assault caused him and his glider to careen out of control, grazing another building and scraping a few chunks of Duracreet and transparisteel from the impact.

"Stop fighting or we'll 'both' die!"

"COWARD!" Maple shouted, forcing his beskar helmed head to grind painfully against a building for a few seconds as they flew high above the street, Maple furiously punching him.

"YOU'RE INSANE!" he screamed as he struggled to get control of the craft. His wrist blades snapped into place and she barely dodged the vicious swipe for her face.

"YOU'RE JUST FIGURING THAT OUT 'NOW'?!" she shouted in actual incredulity as they fought in the air. She had herself wrapped around him in a wrestling move actively trying to cut off the flow of blood to his brain, even though they were going three hundred kilometers per hour in a crowded city scape full of speeders and skyscrapers and any impact at this speed would certainly kill both of them...

(Character Theme Song Power Up)

(Theme: "GoldenEye" by Tina Turner)

They zipped through the air like a sparrow, him trying every air flip he knew, and her finding the way and the strength to hang on and keep hitting his ribcage as hard as she could. They grazed another building as their fight grew more violent, her frenzied punches starting to crack his T-Visor.

Maple cried out as his wrist blades connected, leaving a slight gash in her side, dodging his blade swipe, her punches coming so fast and hard she was threatening to break her knuckles with every blow. Another building grazed and shrapnel from damaged building impacted but her suit got the absolute worst. Matsu Ike had given her a true Life Saver.

It still hurt badly, for a second she lost balance, allowing him to knock her off. She fired a grapple to one of the corners on a building only for him to speed by on his glider and sever it with his wrist blades, causing her to fall again.

Out came the staff, as she fell, she connected its two ends, the spike like crimson vibrotips hissing to life with red electricity as she drove it into a building to slow her fall. The Glider Mandalorian cackled as he produced another grenade and threw it at her just as she caught a fire escape...

The Blast shattered the structure, painfully flinging her to the street below where she crashed, dislocating her right shoulder as she hit, other citzens running away. With a great shout, she managed to barely force the wreckage above off, unable to call on the Force due to her schizophrenia interfering. She saw him come down, standing on his hovering glider.

A white face mask with a cracked lens stared into the cracked visor of The Mandalorian's helmet.

"Your skull will make a fine trophy..." he cackled, the front of his glider opening to reveal the laser aperture...

Maple threw one of her adhesive grenades at it, and it burst into sticky blue goo that covered the front of the craft and its pilot just as the laser fired.

The blast sent the Mandalorian flying as his glider was destroyed.

Maple, wounded and still heavily disoriented dragged herself to the groaning Mandalorian...who was now missing his legs above the knee, wounds cauterized. His right arm below the elbow was missing.

Maple dragged the man, still smoking and mutilated, but alive, to the closest Bounty Office...

Present...

It had been enough to keep up ship costs and groceries. Enough to keep the lights on. She'd gotten multiple death threats from Clan Ozz, but she didn't fear them, not like The Amalgam , who she had learned, had a history with the man she was about to meet.

She had found him. After two months of cross referencing and tracking, she had located his next port of call...Jutrand...

Maple didn't feel right heading into Jedi territory. The Amalgam had partly warped her mentally on a forsaken world called The Graveyard, and one of her eyes was now the sulphur of Sith, despite her best, most sincere attempts to correct this. She had applied a dozen temporary enchantments to her skin designed to conceal her alignment, as she wasn't sure what it was right now. She wore dark, opaque sunglasses as she walked off her vessel to the Jedi Temple

She felt lost. It had been so long since spending time in an actual temple. She knew she didn't belong, and hadn't for years now. She was no Jedi, despite deeply missing it sometimes.

But she had to come here. Iroh Gedari had info on the Beast that had secretly acted as her Jedi Master years ago. The beast that still proclaims itself her mother, and to her horror, not without some small legitimacy to that claim...

She hoped he was in a talkative mood.

She had requested a meeting with him from a Protocol Droid that was part of temple security. She had been directed to a small quiet room with fountains where they could talk.

Iroh was important for more reasons than the Amalgam.

Iroh had met her parents...

 

[Iroh Gedari]

He had been expecting this meeting for some time now.

Iroh had been meditating in one of the many fountain rooms of the Jutrand Jedi Temple when the protocol droid had notified him that he had a visitor. With a wordless nod of acknowledgement to the droid that brought the message, he began to softly descend back down to the floor from where he had been levitating in front of one of the fountains. Around him, the cushions and water that had been orbiting around him during his meditation began to fall to the floor before he reached out with the Force and froze everything in the air around him, then began going through the motions to return it to it's original places within the room.

He could feel her presence as Maple Harte moved towards him. The swirling vortexes of anxiety, fear, and doubt. She was seeking answers. Answers that it seemed only he could give her.

The question though, was if it was information that should be given. As a wise old Jedi had taught him, not every secret was meant to be shared .

As he knelt down on one of the cushions, he flexed his mechanical right hand in bitter remembrance of that, looking down at the clenched gloved fist before facing the door as he bowed his head in thought, hands resting on his knees. When he sensed that she was close enough, his head came up just as the door hissed open. She wore objects to disguise what was going on beneath, but one could not fool him so easily.

As he gazed up into those dark sunglasses, he gave a soft welcoming smile, but his eyes conveyed the regret and sadness only associated with an old man who felt that, perhaps he had been more focused he could have done more...

Iroh motioned for his guest to sit before him.

“Please, have a seat. Can I get you anything?”

 

[Maple Harte]

Maple raised a brow at the display of Force Strength from Iroh Gedari . He was old. He was no pushover. You don't reach his age by being a pushover. Not in this business.

"Master Gedari..." she said quietly, politely as she took to offered seat, going into a lotus position.

"No thanks. My stomach couldn't handle it right now, I'm still going on the adrenaline from this mid-air battle to the death I had a few hours ago. I'd just throw up whatever you give me..." she admitted, declining. Then she got to the point.

"My name is...nowadays...Maple Harte. But my birth name was Uri Udinia. I recently learned the name of my parents, Mary Udinia and Eddie Miles, later Eddie Udinia after he married her. Mary was a lapsed Whill Guardian turned Antique Shop owner, Eddie was a combat engineer turned civil engineer from Alderaan. They met on Myrkyr, the forest world, after a passenger ship they were on with a thousand others was shot down by a starfighter carrying powerful anti-starship weapons and crash landed in a remote part of its forest that blocked scans due to the high metallic content of the trees and was preventing a distress from getting out."

"Now out of all those hundreds...only three survivors. Mary...Eddie...and you..."

Maple took a deep breath, let it out slowly, trying to hold back the insanity.

"Of course, there was another wasn't there, Master Iroh? You know of who I speak..."

Maple steadied her emotions.

"The Amalgam has haunted me for years. Years, Master Gedari. I'm nothing more than a two-bit Bounty Hunter now...but once...I was a Padawan. A Padawan who was forced to do terrible things on Mustafar to survive a Sith Lord...and I drew that Beast's attention. I don't know what you know, but this thing is a monster. A Monster, Master Gedari. She initiated two different slaughters in CIS territory, one on Melida and the second on Castagne. Thousands, millions are dead because of her now..."

Tears streamed down Maple's face.

"The Amalgam pretended to be a Jedi named Ursula Sandraven, and she recruited into a group of Jedi Shadows that she had infiltrated known as The Marksmen. Her magics are so powerful that while they were in effect, no one could sense her allegiance to the Dark Side. They're so powerful, that even Ursula herself didn't know she was actually The Amalgam until it was too late. I remained that monstrosity's student in complete ignorance for years, doing her bidding...then I left, of my own accord when I realized what I was turning into. But that sped up her re-emergence from Ursula. She has been tormenting me ever since, calling herself my Mother, killing former members of The Marksmen she trained as Ursula. But not me. She wants me to turn to The Dark Side."

Maple removed her sunglasses, letting him see the eye stuck in permanent sulphur, contrasting with a beautiful, wet green one.

"And she inflicted 'this' on me at a Planet called the Graveyard..." she gestured to the Sulphur Eye. I feel like she has a piece of my soul. Killing her is the only way to save myself. I 'must' know what you know. Before she devastates another planet with an outbreak of undead, or kills everyone I love. You are the very last person to encounter her before she disappeared into her fake personality as Ursula for the next three decades. You are one of the few to survive a direct encounter. I don't understand why she was so obsessed, 'is' so obsessed wiith me. You might be one of the only people who can shed light on that, or any of her weaknesses. She has defeated me time and again, and I am running close to empty. I am begging for your help. Please. Go back to that day, more than thirty years ago...you can start by telling me what happened in the immediate minutes after the crash and then go from there..." Maple pleaded, truly desperate at this point for answers, any answers...

 

[Iroh Gedari]

Iroh simply nodded and gave a polite smile at her refusal of refreshment...

Though he made a mental note for later to make sure that she got something to eat as well as some rest relatively soon. She might be running on adrenaline now, but give it a few hours and she’ll crash from exhaustion.

But for now, he merely sat and listened. As she told her story he nodded to show he was listening, doing his best to maintain eye contact with her sunglasses blocking her eyes. So his hunch had been correct as to Uri Udina, daughter of Mary and Eddie Udina, seeking him out. Iroh was by no means a seer, but recently his mediations had shown her looking for him. Thus his extended stay at the academy on Jutrand an extra week.

His gaze hardened at the mention of the Beast, the old ache that had plagued him for years in his right arm returning as his bionic hand clenched into a fist.

“Yes, I know what she is.”

A monster indeed. Iroh had been able to find little data following his confrontation with Amalgam, despite years and years of searching. He had managed to come across records of her spending the last two hundred years on a crusade of killing or corrupting Jedi, but for the last thirty or so years after his encounter nothing. But he had known deep down she had not died. Even when training Caldon he had been preparing, strategizing...

But it seemed he had been fooled, misdirected, judging from the woman before him.

His gloved fists tightened even more as he heard her story, the fingers clenching at the fabric of his trousers as he bowed his head. Master Kell-Von had once told him that it was the sins of the previous generations that troubled the present the most. When he saw her remove her sunglasses, showing her corruption to him, it cut him deeply to the core. He felt deep down that he had failed as a Jedi Knight then and there for allowing this monster to harm others...

When she pleaded, begging for help, he looked away for a long moment before speaking. If he were to help her, it could mean the end of a very dangerous individual who threatened the whole galaxy. But continuing down this path was dangerous.

“My dear...it is never that simple.”

He looked back to her, pain and regret etched on his aged features, remorse reflecting back from his gaze.

“I doubt that the information I could give you would be any help.” He looked down at his right arm before continuing. “I myself did not come away unscathed. You should not be doing this all on your own.”

 

[Maple Harte]

"I'm not on my own, Master Gedari. I have...powerful friends...but that hasn't been enough. Me and my friends tried to kill her on Kar Shian and failed. Barely escaped with our lives. Don't discount your memories. You may know something without realizing it. I am positive the reason The Amalgam made up that whole Ursula Sandraven identity to begin with was because of whatever happened on Myrkyr."

Maple stood up, rubbing her eyes...

"That monster taught me everything I know about combat and I never suspected her. Not once. Not for what she really was."

She looked at Iroh Gedari .

"I am running out of time to kill her. I'm ill..."

She didn't elaborate. Her degenerative schizophrenia would eventually consume her completely in an endless series of delusions. It wasn't death. But it was close. Death would come later, bringing a last shard of reality to her psyche before it all blinked out.

Skip. She was the haunted Master and Iroh was the haunted Bounty Hunter. Skip. Back to reality. What she thought was reality anyway.

"Please, Master Iroh...please tell me. Its not just Jedi in danger..."

Maple removed photos, showing him the massacres The Amalgam conducted. The whole villages and colonies of people tortured and murdered in hideous ways to appease The Amalgam's wretched god. Bodies eviscerated in specific patterns, arranged in pentagram still naked and bleeding, or impaled on spikes like a twisted shish kabob.

"She's been really stepping up her game since she came out of hiding..." Maple said, showing him the photos.

"I've met full on Sith who were horrified and disgusted by these, and 'they' told me whatever they knew of her whereabouts, her nature...they didn't know much, but they still tried to assist me...will you?"

 

[Iroh Gedari]

She would destroy herself...

But if he did not help her now, if she continued down this path unaided...

Iroh let out a soft sigh as he closed his eyes for a long moment as the photographs came out, his lips pressed together. With a quick wave of his hand, he flipped the images over with the Force so that they were facing down. Why was she hanging onto these disgusting images? She was trying to guilt him into helping her...

“You should not be going around this place with those.” he whispered, a hint of irritation creeping into his voice as he stood up and walked back over to one of the fountains, hands clasped behind his back as he stared at his reflection in the water.

These memories burned him, ate away at his soul. Not many others would know this information, his report on the matter being sealed away in the Jedi Archives back on the Prosperity. But now, he was adding another to this list of trust. He took a deep breath before speaking.

“What I am about to tell you, very few beings know. Most of them have passed on.” He paused before continuing. “I did not originally know why I was there, but I had been shown a vision in the Force that I should be on that ship to stop some great evil. When that fighter shot us down, I thought that was the evil that I was meant to slay. But I was wrong...”

 

[Maple Harte]

(More than thirty years ago...)

("Shadow of Chernobyl" from Modern Warfare Plays)

Eddie Miles, who had only started calling himself that recently, awoke in a forest covered in snow, surrounded by corpses and wreckage. His green shirt was torn, Captain Kirk style and he had a head of brown hair and green eyes. He struggled to his feet, coughing, bleeding. His right arm felt pained and stiff. Not broken, but stiff.

Eddie looked around, first goal being to look for a weapon. All he had wanted was a vacation. A breather. No chance of that now...

He began to check for injuries. He could still walk. He had cuts but nothing serious. He didn't remember the crash, just blacking out.

It was night time. Snow was still falling. He was cold. He knew he needed warmth, and soon. He had finally managed to get free time. But he never had been lucky at much save survival.

The crash had been bad. He coughed a bit as he moved away from the burning wreckage of the cruiser. He saw nothing but burning corpses ravaged by the impact, half buried in the snow.

It reminded him of his last deployment. He hadn't understood how he had missed it. The charge in the road. He had been baffled how he had come out unscathed.

First order of business was to see to his own well being. He spotted a torn away section of the cruiser. People were still dead in their seats. He pushed past the dead, searching what remained of their luggage. He found a thick black coat in a suitcase and put it on, spotting a man in armor handcuffed to another. Bounty Hunter. He'd never collect his prize. He had seen him while boarding. His suspect had been violent, constantly needing sedation but the Hunter hadn't been allowed to board the main cabin with his weapons. But he had fought hunters before. There was always a trick up their sleeve.

He soon found a few intact things that had survived...

(Zelda Acquisition Theme Plays)

(Eddie has acquired Weapons and Items!)

WEAPON: ADHESIVE FILAMENT LAUNCHER

Spoiler

Specialized Wrist Mounted device that sprays a fine, long range but accurate string of the same material found in adhesive grenades, to temporarily ensnare and immobilize. Only 007 spare Cartridges

Weapon: MICRO SMOKE GRENADE (X4)

Spoiler

Military gas dispersion device made smaller for smuggling purposes, but produces a thirty second cloud of opaque smoke.

Weapon: STUN KNUCKLER

Spoiler

Bronzium Knuckler with spiked electrical prods delivering a thirty thousand volt charge. Requires thirty seconds to recharge.

Item: MICRO-FLASHLIGHT

Spoiler

Bar-shaped mini flashlight with a high capacity battery

Item: HEALING STIM (X1)

Spoiler

Vial of High Strength Regenerative Medicine, capable of mending severe wounds, even broken bones, over a short period of a few hours.

He sighed. He had been lucky to get that much salvaged. Next order of business was looking for survivors and finding a distress beacon...

Five minutes later...

Eddie exited the ship remains, snow falling more now. He smelled burning meat and it made him gag for he knew the source. He began to get ahold of himself, trying to think as he searched. But he had been knocked for a loop with the crash.

He heard a woman's voice crying out for help. He ran to the source. He found a young woman, alive but pinned under wreckage, greatly resembling the woman that would talk to Iroh in the future, save her hair being a slightly darker brown with blue eyes, in a robins egg blue dress, with cuts on her arm and face. She looked incredibly scared, surrounded by corpses but unable to free her leg.

"Is anything broken?" Eddie called out, startling her.

"Relax. It's okay. I'm here to help. Is anything broken?" Eddie asked.

The crying woman tested.

"No..." she answered. "But I can't get free..."

Eddie tried lifting the debris. "Push!" he called out. The woman pushed the debris with him and with extreme effort on their part managed to lift it just long enough to get her free. She scrambled up.

"Thanks..." she said hesitantly.

"I'm Eddie...who are you?" Eddie asked.

"Mary..." Mary answered. "You were on the flight?"

"Yeah..." Eddie answered. "Do you remember what happened?"

"There was a Starfighter..." Mary answered. "Took out our engines..."

"Just one? Couldn't be a pirate...they take ships intact if possible. Why would a lone ship go to the trouble of shooting us down?" Eddie wondered. "Doesn't make any sense...unless something is aboard..."

"The only thing on that ship was bored tourists..." Mary said firmly. "Whoever it was didn't want standard fare..."

Eddie noted her sudden, icy calm. It had turned on like a lightswitch.

"We should keep looking for survivors..." Eddie insisted. "I mean, its unlikely, but..."

"Little choice at this point..." Mary agreed in stoic fashion, having clamped down on her earlier fear with unsettling quickness.

The pair began searching the site, softly calling out to any who might have survived...


Iroh Gedari

 

[Iroh Gedari]

At first...there was darkness...a cloud over his mind...

Then suddenly there was light.

Jedi Knight Iroh Gedari came to still fastened to his seat, not fully able to comprehend the pounding feeling in his head when the seat next to him came loose from its mountings and fell straight down to clatter against what used to be the ceiling. Well that explained that and gave the Jedi Knight the mental boost he needed to fully understand what was going on.

Iroh reached for the release clips on his restraint harness, images coming back to the forefront of his mind as the harness gave way. A sense of danger through the Force, the sounds of engines exploding, then...nothing, darkness.

As he fell from what had become the ceiling he twisted mid-air to land in a crouch on the ground, brown cloak spreading around him like the wings of a large bird before he rose to his feet.

He spotted his lightsaber lying among a pile of debris, though with a pull of the force the silver cylinder flew through the air into his waiting palm, with him then hooking the weapon back onto its place on his belt.

Having been rearmed, he took a look around and saw that approximately twelve rows back the hull had split apart into multiple pieces. Another look around showed him the bodies either still in their seats or laying across the ground, as if someone had opened a box of cookies then scattered the contents. Reaching out with the Force, he could only detect two other life signs...pressing his lips together in irritation Iroh raised the hood on his cloak and began to walk towards the two beings he felt in the Force.

As he got closer to them, he heard voices. A man and a woman calling out for other survivors of the crash. As he came around a piece of wreckage he saw them.

“Hello there!”

 

[Maple Harte]

Eddie and Mary snapped their gaze towards Iroh Gedari as soon as he called out to them. The pair quickly made their way, but Mary wasn't looking quite at Iroh.

Rather as she headed up to him, her gaze fell on a stone idle sitting in the middle of the woods behind the crashed ship behind Iroh and to his left.

It was a white statue depicting an Oni with an iron club, except its snarling face was replicated dozens of times on its arms and chest and legs.

"Hear that?" Mary asked under her breath before they reached Iroh enough to be in proper speaking range.

"Hear what?" Eddie asked the strange young woman.

"Exactly..." Mary whispered in a grim manner. "There's nothing in these woods..."

Eddie peered around and realized Mary was right. There was nothing. No late night animal calls, no birds flying, no grazing animals wandering the edge of the woods out of curiosity. The crash could have driven them back but surely even a bird would have already been spotted at this point. But there really was nothing. Eddie could not even find signs of previous habitation: No tracks in the snow, no snapped twigs--

For now though, there was the other survivor.

"Hey there!" Eddie called out, running up to him with Mary, who remained silent staring into the woods, eyes focusing on the disturbing statue a bit more.

"Thank the Force! A Jedi!" Eddie exclaimed. "I'm Eddie. This is...Mary wasn't it?"

"Yes..." Mary confirmed distantly, blue eyes having an unexpectedly hard gaze, in spite of her obvious youth and beauty.

"I saw a lot of dead. I...I think we might be the only three who made it..." Eddie said nervously. "A single starfighter attacked us..."

"Good pilot too. Efficiently crippled the whole ship in under a minute..." Mary added. "There's something wrong with the woods here too..."

Eddie peered about, intently listening for any animal calls over the crackling of the fire consuming much of the ship wreckage. Nothing. Nothing at all.

Mary pointed to the unsettling statue.

"This whole place feels wrong. I don't think we're safe here..." Mary admitted.

"I gotta agree with her, Master Jedi. I've been in these types of woods on deployment. No signs of animal habitation anywhere. No sounds beyond what we ourselves make. It ain't natural, sir..." Eddie asserted.

"We shouldn't stay here. I got a bad feeling about this..." Mary added, wishing she had a staff...

 

[Iroh Gedari]

( Maple Harte )

As Iroh got closer to the other two survivors, something pinged in the back of his mind. It wasn’t the gear on the man, if he had to wager he’d lifted it off a corpse from the crash. No, back to earlier when he had reached out through the Force and found them.

He’d found only them...no other interference from wildlife. But seeing as the Force resides in all living beings...

Something was going on here...as he reached through the Force again he could not detect any hostile intent emanating from the other two survivors, causing him to drop his guard concerning them.

“My name is Iroh Gedari, member of the Jedi Order.” he bowed his head towards the two as they introduced themselves. The woman, Mary, she was...perceptive.

“We must seek shelter, but we should stay close to the wreck if we are to be found.”

He had to agree with the two of them, something was off here. As he pulled the cloak tightly around him he looked over to the treeline in thought, then pointed towards what looked like a better set of trees than the others.

“There...let’s first try to salvage what we can from the place, leave clues for the searchers.”

 

[Maple Harte]

"We can't..." Mary said quietly but tersely to Iroh Gedari . "Nothing about this makes any sense. No life in these woods anywhere. And I get the feeling whoever shot us down isn't done with us...we should scavenge...but I don't think we want to be found right now..."

Mary tensed as she saw the starfighter, a red TIE variant she had seen only in history books streak overhead. She felt...nothing aboard it. An absence that terrified her more than a presence would have.

Eddie watched it turn on search lights as it flew to the crash site.

"Get out of sight!" Eddie hissed, ducking under a canopy as Mary did.

They watched the searchlights, hoping they didn't spot Iroh. After a few minutes, it began to move away but slowly, until it was out of sight.

"We have five minutes before it comes back, tops..." Eddie said. "Scavenge quickly..."

They began to scavenge the crash site some more, Mary finding an old Palandrix Powered Cane in the wreck. No telling whose it was, but it was a stick. She could work with sticks.

Eddie whistled as he found a scattergun inside a suitcase full of credits.

"Somebody had a party. Or was going to one..." Eddie remarked.

"What kinda party requires shotguns?" Mary asked.

"You'd be surprised..." Eddie answered, keeping an ear out for the starfighter.

"Gedari!" Mary called out. "That fighter...its Imperial...could it be you they're after?"

Eddie heard the whine of the fighter in the distance.

"Two minutes before its on us..." Eddie warned, "I think we scavenged all we can."

"Then its time to run..." Mary said, heading for the deeper part of the woods.

"Where the hell do we run? We don't even know where we are!" Eddie exclaimed.

"That's the least of our worries!" Mary called back, breaking into a sprint through the snow, not wanting to have to fight whoever or whatever was aboard that Starfighter, especially now that she sensed a horrific, rotting Corruption aboard it, that had ceased hiding itself...

"Don't be a hero, Jedi! Run with us!" Eddie called out to Iroh.