Dominion Cubed | GA Dominion of Janara III

[Cordé Sabo]

“Wha—Sion, no!” Her belated protest was in vain. She only had time, barely, to brace.

Up, up they went. Into the vent. Away from the objective they were trying to achieve. Away from the objective she needed to complete to prove herself an agent capable of working alongside The New Jedi Order. A necessary component for Task Force Y to be officiated.

Her panic was now twofold. Claustrophobia’s compressive grip, and the panic of potentially failing in her duty. Both were suffocating, and made it impossible to make any further noise of objection.

The vent was small, square, and if Sion Lorray hadn’t been holding her so close, one of them might have hit the perimeter with either a shoulder or, worse, a head. Instead, they slammed into a slope. Cordé felt all the wind that had gathered in her lungs whoosh out straight through her on impact.

Gravity changed her groan to a gasp. The slope was unanticipated, and her disorientation continued. Frantic, she meant to get a grip, slapping her hands against fast-moving, smooth metal. Nothing to grab onto, nothing to stop them from getting further away from their objective.

Breathless and winded, Cordé still managed to mewl out a string of Nonononono!s.

Remorselessly, gravity kept pulling, and then, with a sense of finality, the slide disappeared from under them.

The smell of decay was the only warning before the drop.

Unadorned except for the concealed illuminants, the garbage room was at least a quarter full of slimy much, much of it already achieved a state of decomposition that matched some of the corpses they’d just fled from.

 

[Sion Lorray]

Cordé Sabo

He landed in the muck and the slime and grossness.

Yet?

Sion was relieved.

Because the all-consuming, compressive nature of the Darkside was gone now. Away from his mind and the sickling influence it had been trying to exert on him. "Oh... kriff..." But now the pain was rushing to fill the gaps that relief had left. "Everything hurts..." He groaned and tried to stand, before realizing that Cordé was still on top of him.

"Um." Gently, carefully, not to stir her too much he guided her up and climbed back to his feet as well. "I know that isn't exactly what you wanted..."

In the distance the Jedi could already feel a storm approach.

It was futile to try and forestall it, but Sion had to try anyway.

"There were too many, Cordé. You know that. We would have been overwhelmed before we could gather even one shred of Kyber." But even though it sounded logical to him? Sion was doubting too.

Maybe... maybe they could have?

 

[Cordé Sabo]

Landing on all that debris and sludge should have hurt more. Still winded from the initial collision, it took her half a beat to realize Sion's complaining about pain was coming from…

.. beneath her. He'd mostly cushioned her fall and taken the lion's share of the collision. She flushed, cheeks pink with gratitude and the remaining fury that bubbled in her belly. Transitioning to stand on uneven ground, she found herself frowning deeply instead of thanking him.

Her blaster clunked out the chute and splatted next to their feet.

Silence settled between them, and frustration stirred within. Frustration and fear warred at the base of her throat, fighting for dominance.

Fear was winning when she looked around. Their new location was smaller than the last, suffocatingly so. And their landing in the long-undisturbed garbage pile had unsettled some pungent odours that wafted in and out of notice.

Cordé needed something else to focus on.

As angry as she was, she looked back to Sion. He was dirtier than she, goopish stuff clung to his clothes and —

"—You're hurt." Cordé noticed, and ignored everything else he'd said. This was good. Well, not good, but distracting enough for her to get a bit more of a grip and not be out of her wits. She could focus on this. She knew how to do this.

Her hands moved to his bicep, where something must have sliced him when they fell. His arms had been around her a that point, if they hadn't been, that might have gone through something more vital on her torso.

His sleeve was getting redder and wetter. "Let me take care of it?" He'd said before he couldn't heal himself with his magic, right?

"Don't need an infection on top of everything else.." Even just going through the motions of reaching for her mini-med pack at her hip was already starting to soothe her nerves.

She unzipped and removed a cleaning cloth first, to get rid of the muck and blood around the opening. While dabbing, she took in a breath.

"This isn't what I wanted because I'm here on a trial mission." She glanced to him. "If I succeed, I'll be considered for the SIA's new task force." Disinfectant was applied next. She forgot to warn Sion Lorray about the sting. "If I don't.. ," she sighed and left the sentence inconclusive. Mostly because she didn't know. Would she go back home to Humbarine? Maybe.

"Maybe there's another way."

 

[Sion Lorray]

Cordé Sabo

"Hurt?"

Sion blinked and looked around. It took him a moment to notice the redness welling up through his sleeve. Mostly because he looked like complete garbage, because of the... well... garbage. "Oh..." Eyes a bit wide, because now the pain was starting to make sense. It felt like a cold knife slicing through his arm. A sort of phantom pain the body used as a trigger warning. Alert, alert, your hand is on fire. But then the knifing variant of that. Slicing? He wasn't really sure what had happened.

Still.

This was preferable to the alternative. "I am glad you are not yelling at me." He murmured softly as she began to work on his wound. Only a momentary hiss when the sting of the disinfectant worked its way through his bleeding wound.

Just a hiss, because he had been through worse. Much worse. This was more a playful jab compared to what had come before.

"Oh..." Again his mouth shaped in a surprised circle when Cordé explained her urgency. "I... didn't know, Cordé. I am sorry." Sorry, yes, but he would have made the same decision again. This he didn't mention, because she wasn't yelling at him, so Sion wanted to maintain that fragile peace. "We will figure it out together."

Reaching out with his unwounded hand to touch her shoulder before hesitating at the end there.

"I... promise. We will get out of here, mission intact, and you will get on that task force."

His hand dropped back down to settle next to his hip. While she wrapped up the patch job, Sion looked around the place. Hm. Where those walls closer now than they had been a moment ago?

"First line of business- get out of this trash chute." No, that couldn't be, must have been his imagination- wait, that was a déjà vu moment. Hadn't he thought that with the corpses too? "I don't want to alarm you, but the walls might be moving. This might be a trash compactor." Which wasn't ideal, but also wasn't the end of the world. The chute entrance was still above them.

If necessary he could throw her back into the hole.

"Find an exit and then find a safe-ish spot, where we can strategize. How hard can that be?"

 

[Cordé Sabo]

“I wanted to yell at you.” Cordé admitted flatly.

"I... promise. We will get out of here, mission intact, and you will get on that task force."

“That’s not a promise you have to make. Or keep.” Despite herself, she smiled at his reassurance. “But thank you.”

Then, she gagged. Because of the foetid smell.

“Sorry, not you it’s—” she gestured, summarising their surroundings, and gagged again. The smell was growing more and more rancid. Probably because the piles were shifting around and being disturbed.

"I don't want to alarm you, but the walls might be moving. This might be a trash compactor."

Too bad if he didn’t want to. She was alarmed. Her eyes widened noticeably, and she glanced about furtively.

Dread set in her belly when she realised he was right.

Of course the walls were closing in on them. She always felt like that was happening in small spaces like this, but now it was actually happening.

Panic mixed with dread, and she focused on zipping up her medkit. Making sure nothing got inside and damaged the contents. The familiar motions were steadying. She inhaled through the thick stench, and exhaled to steady herself. The steps Sion laid out added something else to focus on, and she chose to focus on him and his ideas rather than the walls groaning together.

“There’s up,” she looked back where they’d come from and knelt to reholster her blaster. While she reached, her vambrace caught the dim lighting and she felt herself redden. A grappling hook.

She’d had a grappling hook this whole time. He hadn’t needed to hold her.

“That takes us back, but steep.”

Did they have time to go through this? Were the walls really closing in?

Trash that had been on the top of the pile rummaged and rolled down into the sludge. The room was definitely moving. In response, Cordé felt herself going stiff.

She didn’t want to touch the walls, feel them at all, but for the first time, she took the time to look at them. Sludgy, streaked, and filthy. Was there a door anywhere? Did the garbage ever get out? Or did it all just disintegrate here?

“Any openings on our level? Even something we can..make?”

 

[Sion Lorray]

Cordé Sabo

With that additional context?

"That would have been fair." Perhaps not entirely, but Sion wasn't one to deny another person's emotions. That would have been too hypocritical considering how attuned he was to all of them around himself.

Yeah, the smell was putrid.

It had a way of forcing itself up his nostrils, down his throat, it was everywhere. The only reason Sion wasn't gaging himself was because he was so focused on her emotions. Until her emotions shifted towards gagging anyway. That amplification caused him to double-over and almost straight up just throw up.

He wasn't sure what prevented it.

Maybe it was the rollercoaster run of Cordé's feelings. Now back to fear and then determination. Sion spit to the side and coughed. "Kriff, this isn't what I was hoping for our first official mission together." He muttered as he straightened up again. This gagging experience made sure Sion missed the fact she had a grappling hook.

Probably for the best to keep that embarrassment to herself.

"I... well, I got the lightsaber." Sion mutters as he raises it up. "Can you scan the walls? See if any of them have space beyond them? I don't know how long we have and I don't wanna waste time slicing into a wall that is solid for minutes we might not have..."

 

[Cordé Sabo]

Strange how Sion Lorray had seemed so composed until she no longer was. How he’d almost wholly wretched only after she’d gagged — as though he’d felt her extreme discomfort and it had amplified his own.

There was no time to consider his unease, nor what his hopes had been for their first mission in contrast to their present.

If later ever arrived, she’d ask him about it then.

For now, the smoothly fitting metal walls were moving toward one another with stolid precision. Cordé could no longer be delusional with the plausibility that their space was not getting more and more confined. Because it was.

Find something worth cutting through — that was her sole focus now. Nothing else.

Minutes traded for metres — the space was getting smaller by the second — soon the pair would be forced to turn sideways. The rumble of compacting machinery was relentless. Chunks of whatever had been something before noisily tumbled down the pile, sloshing into the sludge at the base.

Her chest clenched and she almost choked again; both from the smell and the horrible metal reality that groaned against her fingers. It pressed harder into her hand than she could have imagined. If she had her HUD (it was still fallen next to the seared off hand Sion had cut earlier), this could have been an automated reading. Not such a frantic, stumbling, desperate, intimate feel along metal for any sort of lip she could grip and call an exit.

With a sharp inhale, which was gross, Cordé slid down the pile and dropped to her knees, shoving her hands into the murky liquid and began to feel about the edge of the space that was against the most centre wall. One of two walls that were not actively moving, but supported the slide of the compactor.

Trembling and cold, she hardly believed it when she felt a rise of metal against the base of the wall, beneath the surface of muck.

“Sion! Here!” A small, thick hatchway which she grunted and heaved to pry open. But it refused to budge.

 

[Sion Lorray]

Cordé Sabo

"Stay clear!"

He yelled in warning before igniting his lightsaber and quickly getting to work. This time around it was easier. The hull was thin. Not meant to keep out captured plasma burning through its metal surface. He made a quick incision and sliced through the lock mechanisms underneath the texture. It hissed open all of a sudden.

Part of the murky liquid trapped with them began to drip away.

"You first," Sion commanded without brokering any discussion as he glanced away from her and the hatch. Instead keeping an eye on the walls. They were twice as close as they had been fore. He could now stretch his hands on either side and touch them both.

Fast.

Very fast.

Was there something moving in the water? The Jedi raised his saber to illuminate the watery surface...

 

[Cordé Sabo]

While Sion worked, Cordé stared into the chute.

She couldn’t help it. She had to turn away from the sizzling azure against the muck and metal, and face the closing in walls. Her heart thumped in her ears, deafening any other sound of groaning metal, or water on plasma, or anything else. Her nerves felt as bright as stars, and for all their brilliance, they were as blinding too. She was growing faint fast.

Claustrophoia’s rapacious grip tightened around her ribs and skull. Crushing, crushing, crushing down and tighter, so tight, until it was all she could feel. She was losing control. And half a second before the hatch relented, Cordé gasped audibly, sure she was about to pass out from the overwhelmedness of so little space.

Sion ordered her through and for the first time in her life, Cordé didn’t argue. Chivalry or Jedi creed, whatever he wanted to call it, could certainly claim victory here without contest. She was barely retaining enough consciousness to argue. Ready to slip through like the murkish waters, she was about halfway out to freedom, to wider spaces, when the worst thing that could have happened, happened.

---

What used to happen once a week, hadn’t happened in a long long time. Time, of course, was less a concept of minutes or measures, and more of a series of events that were expected and supposed to happen. It was hard to explain but the creature knew that at a certain time, certain movements and tingles meant certain things. And when they didn’t happen, it was nice. Things had been calm, spacious, and unbothered since Gehinnom II’s stasis above Empress Teta. Of course, the creature had no concept of Gihennom II. Or Empress Teta. There was just her habitat.

Usually, it was the smell of fish that stoked her appetite. But for so long, whatever timeline measured longness, she hadn’t been fed fish. And the taste of rust was growing repulsive. Munching on metal only satiated the barest of her desires. For a creature such as herself, it was almost an insult.

Today, there was splashing. What was today? Now? Right now, there was splashing. And then light! And heat! The lid of her prison was compressing toward the light. Everything but the light was smooth and black, hard, and cold. Unrelentingly a prison.

Her front tentacle twitched. Drawn to the light, and that wonderful, magnetic heat. The vibration buzzed across the floor, through the murkiness. Something around the light was shadowy and podlike, swift in motion but not like any creature she’d hunted before. She was curious though, drawn by the unknowing temptation and the sweet, sweet heat.

She shot her two front tentacles forward, moving like a zip fish. She had to be impossible, and not miss the parts she needed to grasp. She was starving. As offensive as the fish had been, she had not been fed in countless days.

Aha! She grasped his legs and was on him in seconds with the spur in her left tentacle. And in this way, she stung.

---

There was no awareness in her action – it must have been instinct fighting through her phobic numbness. She oculd have just left, escaped, reclaimed her sense of awareness — but something grander than herself drew her back.

“Sion!” His name ripped from her throat, and she heard it as though it were a recording of herself. She forced her eyes shut, then open, gritting her teeth as if sheer will would force the terror away. Her hands searched for her weapon, found it, and fired into the bleak brown of the sludge where her companion had been tugged into. That wasn't enough.

She fired again, and, sucked in a deep breath, braving reinserting herself to the collapsing room once again.

 

[Sion Lorray]

Cordé Sabo

He turned around, deciding he had imagined it, but then something wrapped around his ankle.

Slimy, slick and firmer than it had any right to be.

"Cord-" And then Sion got yanked back into the water. The last thing he saw was Cordé's eyes, before his vision was filled with muddy water and fear... a lot... of fear. Pain. Hunger. It was all-consuming. And... none of it was his. Somehow the cold water calmed him down rather than made him panic. Maybe it was a concussion or maybe the act of drowning had a way of making everything else irrelevant.

Either way- Sion kicked away to face whatever belonged to the tentacle.

It stung him at the same time.

The Padawan gasped in pain, but forced his eyes to remain open and his mouth properly SHUT. Swallowing even a little bit of this sewage would be more deadly than any stingray.

CALM. Sion projected towards the creature. PEACE. UNDERSTANDING. Even as the creature tried to sting him again, Sion managed to dodge it this time and tried to be useful for the first time in his life. He became water, embraced it, and the animal's hunger slid off of him instead of becoming part of his own essence.

I FEEL YOUR SUFFERING. I CAN HELP-

Cordé. Beautiful Cordé. Brave Cordé. Stupid badly-timed Cordé. Shot into the water to rescue him, but only served to agitate the creature more.

"Don't shoot, Cordé." His mind touched hers, as gentle as he could, because the girl didn't like this intimacy. "It is a victim of the Maw. We need to help it."

It had been about to throw a few more tentacles in Cordé's direction, but froze up right underneath the surface. Sion had cried out in their shared mindspace to stop... that he will feed her, promise, and bring her back to the place she was stolen from.

He swore it.

And then... Sion was starting to feel a bit worse.

Black lights in his eyes. His lungs burning up.

 

[Cordé Sabo]

A new heat! A brilliance! It skittered across the surface, briefly, before it pierced through the muck of her home. It had been beautiful, drawing, but it turned out to be deadly. Above the large hole in the ground with the squiggles 6830133 etched above the entrance — what her body would look like if she were to be blown apart by all this savage heat. Tiny bits of tentacles and body floating around in horrible shapes that were nothing like her true magnificence.

Bits and pieces pressed against her body, metal parts, pieces that were not metal but were just as dead, all soupy and wretched. She wanted to sink away, avoid it all, but this thing smelled better to eat than alien fish.

She wanted it. She wanted it more than anything.

So she reached for it, and, OUCH! Something blasted past her, red and hot. Pain exploded in one of her tentacles and the water around her turned blue with blood. She let go of the stung creature and withdrew to whimper and recover.

Her back tentacle hung limply, a gaping hole in its centre. She pulled it close to her body and drew in a deep, polluted breath.

__

Her peripherals blistered and blackened and she wheezed, turning away from the chute and to the newfound area to heave into the space. On top of being claustrophobic from the walls, Cordé could hear Sion Lorray in her head. As if he had made a microscopic version of himself, pulled up a stool with a megaphone, and was settling amidst the moist ridges. His voice bounced around her skull, vibrating and making her deeply uncomfortable.

She meant to cringe, but her cheeks were full of repugnancy, and instead, her throat blistered and bloomed with indignancy mixed with the natural gagging from the penetrative stench. Whether it was by will of the Jedi, or sheer loss of control, Cordé dropped her blaster.
__

It exclaimed to her in a language that was not diagonese. It reverberated through the water, through her. Enough to draw her tentacles and entire self to a stillness that paused.

Nothing like this had ever happened for her, to her. However long, whatever measurement of time she’d been on this planet-not-planet. All she’d experienced was fish thrown at her, sometimes chopped up, sometimes whole, always disgusting. And the environment shifting, and wretched nutrition she was forced to consume from desperation.

I CAN HELP-

The words meant nothing. But the tone, the tone meant everything.
The creature's tentacles pushed, forcing the limp shape of the would-have-been-meal out the hole it created. Cautious, barely staving off her curious hunger, she brushed the form of the giant-fleshy fish. It was all she could do to communicate her plea to uphold that promise he called it. He? She? It. Whatever this thing was. This big, loud, fish-not-fish that could communicate through feeling and tone.

It seemed to know she wanted out.

And she did, more than ever. But with these walls caving in, she was forced to rescind. Withdrawing into the darkness to conceal herself from the crushing reality of the walls.

 

[Sion Lorray]

Cordé Sabo

He was unceremoniously thrown out of the water and through the hole his saber had made.

There Sion landed with a gasp, coughing up excess fluids and retching, because nobody should ever swallow the filth that was in that water. His eyes were burning, his lungs were positively on fire, but even as Sion was gasping and trying to recover... he felt satisfied. This had been the first time his empathy hadn't been an anchor around his neck.

He'd be celebrating.

If the Jedi wasn't busy dry-heaving into the floor.

"C-Cordé?" Gasping her name, miserably, and trying to get on his hands and knees. "T-thanks...." For trying. Even if it had almost gotten him and her killed in that moment.

But she wouldn't have known that.

It was natural to see a threat and react with violence. Was there anything more human than that?

"Where are we?"

The plaintive feelings of the creature followed him out however. He turned towards the chute that was closing, almost reaching out before stopping himself there. It wouldn't matter now. She was beyond the water surface. YES. I WILL RETURN, I PROMISE... What Sion didn't add there was the qualitive in his head:

If we survive.

 

[Cordé Sabo]

Brown goop and sludge pooled all over the floor the pair had landed on. Cordé had a few seconds more than Sion Lorray to gather herself, and shove aside the embarrassing weakness that was claustrophobia.

This place was much larger. Less zombie and garbage filled, and she could feel more in control here.

The hallway they had emerged into showed dust on the floor. It gave the impression of not having been used since the enormous moon-shaped station had been built. Probably it was only a repair access corridor. And it went on, and on, and on, and on.

“Are you okay?” She asked, and on her knees, shuffled through the sludge toward him and help him gain a sense of self. “What happened to you? I was scar ——” she stopped, feeling her voice waiver, and she tensed and held back from reaching out. Was that the claustrophobia persevering?

"Where are we?"

“I,” she started to answer, but realised she didn’t know. She had no idea where they were. The little map on her arm might tell them, but so far, it had forgotten to tell them about the zombies, the garbage chute, the compacting walls, and the worm in the muck.

“—uh,” her stammer blistered, still breathless from her claustrophobic reaction, and threatened to pucker into a nervous laughter until she managed to distract herself with the rag-tag map on her vambrace.

“I can’t believe this, but if we continue this way, down that corridor and take a left, we’ll end up near the main hangar.”

 

[Sion Lorray]

Cordé Sabo

He rolled onto his back again and sighed, closing his eyes there.

If only Sion could get some sleep. So... tired. "I am... fine." He managed after a while. "The creature pulled me in to eat me. But." A grimace as he thought back to the feelings he felt coming from it. "It had been captured by the Maw a long time ago. Used as a pet. Hurt, prodded, fed with rotten fish. It didn't deserve to die, just because it was hungry and acting out of instinct."

This didn't mean Sion would have let it eat him.

But it meant the Jedi couldn't very well take it personally.

"We will have to come back for it. I promised. The GADF must have a way of transporting dangerous exotic animals without hurting them." They weren't the Confederates of Independent Systems or the NIO after all.

They actually cared about sentient life.

Finally Sion got his chit together and began to climb onto his feet. At least, he tried to, before his left leg collapsed in on itself and caused him to face-plant into the floor again. "Ow." He murmured in a muffled sound against the metal. "Thnk-" If Cordé bothered to check it out, she'd notice a hole in his utility trousers.

That's where the creature had stung him and laced him with some sort of sedative to make him an easier meal.

Presumably this was also why Sion felt so exhausted.

"Gon-" He twisted his face to the side so he could look at her. "Gonna need... yar help to get up."

 

[Cordé Sabo]

Cordé frowned. He didn’t seem fine. His hair was stuck to his face, he was covered in garbage, there was a weariness to his physique, and a sluggishness to his speech that hadn’t been there before. And was..was he delirious? The explanation of the worm’s intent to eat him, and its history with The Maw was..

..it was insane.

How could he possibly have come up with all that?

“What?” Was all she managed, flatly, when Sion Lorray explained what had happened to him under the rubbish. It was embarrassingly inarticulate, but his explanation of the creature, and what they still had to do, was unfathomably unreal.

She was nearby when he tried to stand and failed. She flinched when he face planted, and rolled over lazily.

Her frantic heartbeat was steadier now, more regulated, and his nigh-deranged state was tapping into her precedence of medicinal duty.

“Hold on,” she started, and rested a hand to his shoulder to let him know she was near and taking a scan of his person. Her sentence was inconclusive, and she hummed to herself. Not having her HUD mad the convenience of diagnosis far away, but she could at least with her naked eye see there was something wrong.

“I think when it wanted to eat you, it wanted to tenderise you too.” Cordé murmured, and hovered her hand above his leg. If it was a pacifying agent, she didn’t have much in her immediate medkit to counter its toxins. Other than adrenaline.

But she didn’t want to shoot that into him if he didn’t need it.

“Okay, we’re going to try and stand. If it’s too much, you tell me.” She lowered herself to his side, encouraging his arms up over hers, and manoeuvring his body so she could help shoulder him up. With one knee planted, and one bent, maybe she could help him up. She’d always been bad at this part during training.

Cordé, of course, was ignorant of the amount of energy it had taken to Force-blast the zombies, and lift them both through the chute. The neutralising sting of the garbage worm might have been the final blow to Sion’s energy — and she would have been none the wiser.

Unless he told her.

And if he did, would adrenaline be the answer? Or was it time?

 

[Sion Lorray]

Cordé Sabo

"Not her fault..." He muttered as she maneuvered his body and he slung an arm around her shoulder. "Imagine being kidnapped from your home, tortured, left to starve..." Was that the creature or was Sion talking about himself? No, it was the creature, certainly. He yawned and leaned a bit heavier against Cordé.

"Think- I used too much."

Too much what?

Once he got his feet beneath him with Cordé's help he looked around. It was a long hallway. Broad too. Perhaps this was one of the service halls used by the Maw to get around this monstrosity of a ship faster.

"There... should be a maintenance lift here. Doubt we can get it to work, but-" He peered at one of the ends of the hall. Was that a light flickering on and off? "There? Let's try that route." He yawned and squeezed her shoulders together a bit more. "Too much Force use." Muttered to her, as if he was sharing a secret... and in a way Sion was.

"Can't do that many things in a row without being... exhausted."

Sion stretched slowly.

"Time... what I wouldn't give for a bed." Then her feelings pressed against him and Sion glanced to the side. "Are you okay? I was so busy with the creature and now so tired. She didn't hurt you?"

 

[Cordé Sabo]

The infallibility of the Jedi turned out to be a hoax.

At that, and Sion’s softness, Cordé smiled gently.

“Hey, okay, let’s – we can get down that corridor later. I’m not going to drag you all the way down it when you’re like this.” She was still uncertain about the strength of the toxin going through his system. Would he collapse? If he started to lose more consciousness, she’d stab him with adrenaline. If he kept at this level, she’d just let him rest. More often than not, the human body was better at healing itself than any scientific solution.

Despite his tension around her shoulders, and the slump of his legs, she was bracing rather well. Well enough to check the clearly outdated map on her vambrace. The main hangar was to their left, and to their right… It looked like a row of narrow rectangles all in a row and then one oblong shape separated from them. Maybe a locker room? Sion could lay on the bench, and if the showers were working, could rinse the toxin and garbage from his person.

She inched in that direction instead.

It would be selfish to push otherwise. All she wanted was the mission’s conclusion. The kyber crystals gathered — but..unfortunately, with all the obstacles thus far, it was unlikely Cordé would see success without Sion Lorray ’s help.

And right now, he was very unhelpful.

“Maybe we can find one, at least somewhere to rest.” She suggested, and flashed the map in his direction in case he was coherent enough to be curious.

Then, she felt her cheeks warm from embarrassment.

“No, I’m —” the worm had been less a concern than the walls. “Fine, she, it, didn’t hurt me.”

“You keep referring to what attacked you as female. What do you mean her?” Cordé asked, partly to distract him and keep him conscious, and partly because she thought he was just insane and desperately wanted him to prove otherwise.

 

[Sion Lorray]

Cordé Sabo

They weren't going towards the flickering light.

Instead they were going... elsewhere. Locker room? That's the impression he got from the shape of her mind. Warm water, a bench to lie on, he would have lied if he claimed that didn't sound appealing. "I do like the idea of rest." He muttered as he glanced at the map being shown to him. "You know, that ... is far outdated than it should have been." Echoing her own thoughts on the matter before Cordé and him stumbled into the locker room proper.

It was sobering to see that even a crazy karking cult like the Maw had basic amenities.

A locker room, dozens of lockers spread across the walls, a shower area in the corner, benches to sit on.

For some reason Sion didn't like that. Crazed cultists who sacrificed sentient species for dark rituals shouldn't have stuff like this. It made them far more sentient.

"I... huh? Oh." As he sat down on one of the benches. Shaking his head to shake out the cobwebs. "It's a she. I could... hm, with the Force? You can talk to sentient life with your mind. I could sense her history, her hurt and fear and hunger." Then Sion shrugged. "I don't think she recognized gender categories, but her inner voice felt feminine to me so that's why I refer to her as she."

And to humanize her to himself and to Cordé.

So they'd be less likely to pull out a gun and try to execute 'it'.

"She showed me how the Maw captured her at her homeworld. It was awful. Nobody should be taken from their family." He began to awkwardly try to unbutton his field jacket. The buttons were giving him trouble with how numb his fingers were feeling however.

"Can you..." help? Gesturing towards them.

 

[Cordé Sabo]

Once Sion Lorray was seated, Cordé moved from him to scour through the area to check for both zombies or supplies. She could still hear him of course, and how his voice was growing blearier with each syllable.

She only lost part of what he was saying when she tested the tap to see if the Maw’s plumbing system was like The Alliance’s. With a groan and a shudder, the long-unused pipes groaned to life and sputtered out a flash of murkish liquid. She stepped back and let it run, hoping it’d clear up eventually.

His story tapered off and he got quieter than before — it was alarming enough for her to stop scouring through the lockers for any left behind sacks or alternative dry clothes.

“Are you o—” She turned to look over her shoulder in time to see his meekish gesture. The toxins in his bloodstream were sure effective in making him sluggish. “Oh. Yes.”

There was some giant oversized coat-looking thing in the locker she’d been peering into, but she left it in there for now. No need to contaminate it with their garbage smell and dampness early on.

Kneeling next to the bench, she glanced briefly at the tear in his trousers. Whatever that creature had been had done a good job leaving a mark that looked steamed on to his skin. Red and almost blistering. She’d have to disinfect that too. After he rinsed.

If he could stay conscious or in control enough of his own limbs to rinse.

“If you’re losing feeling in your fingers, keep clenching and unclenching your hands into fists.”

She peeled off her gloves, and with deft motions, helped with the buttons. Keeping her focus on the little circles and nothing else. Not how cold his skin was beneath, and definitely not making eye contact. It was the muscle memory of cutting through, or having to undress a hundred patients in med school, that broke through the chill in her own fingers and helped pop open what kept him trapped in the sopping material.

It helped too that he was still talking nonsense that she could hone in on.

“She showed you?” Cordé repeated, adopting the feminine descriptor and glancing up finally with the final button. "You could see?"

There was something horrible about the idea that Sion had been communicating with a giant garbage worm, and had reached into Cordé’s head to speak to her.

She’d bring that up after.

“No, they shouldn’t.” Belatedly, she agreed with him about how family should never be taken from family. That was one of the primary reasons her mother was so against the indoctrination of The Jedi. Their overreach had divided their family, and many others, for years. Robbing cradles just because one group deemed it so. It was easy to agree with that.

“And that’s why you promised to help her, so she could get back to her family?”

She rocked back on her heels.

“Are you able to stand, or would sitting be better to get all this off you. I got the refresher working, but I can’t promise it’ll be warm...or pleasant at all, actually."

 

[Sion Lorray]

Cordé Sabo

He clenched his hands.

Unclenched.

Clenched again.

It seemed to help and Sion smiled up at her. "Dunno what I would do without you." Probably be completely okay, because he wouldn't have as much motivation to get those kyber crystals. Since it was HER initiation mission. Whereas for him it was just another Taungday. This was something that didn't occur Sion though while he was in the thralls of the toxin and force-exhaustion.

"Yeah. Showed me." Nodding there tiredly as he began to shrug off the jacket now that the unbuttons got unstuck. "Can't say her home is very hospital... but I guess for her it was."

A groan as he shifted his leg.

"I want it off. All of it." Sion muttered as he stared at the caked up blood down the line of his trousers. "I can feel the filth on my skin." Was that his skin... or was it leathery, oily and much stronger than human skin? Part of him was still back in the excesses of trash, filth and constant rotten carcasses. Maybe part of him would always remain there.

"Dun' care about comfort."

Sion yawned and then- slapped himself in the face.

"I need to get things together. Cold shower will help." Once the job was done he'd stumble towards the refresher. This was a lot of trust that Sion was placing in Cordé, but there was no other way of doing things. It did mean however... that while the refresher turned on and Cordé could hear Sion cursing (first time in all this time she had known him)?

The girl had an opportunity to check out his lightsaber in greater detail.

The Jedi jealously guarded these artifacts.

Who knew when she'd have another opportunity like this?