Where: The Blood Wastes
Who: Stupid Girl
What: augh!?
Mud and blood and mud and where was she what was going on there was screaming everywhere
Fable was no stranger to the cacophonous confusion of constant crying, the sound of a crowd - nearly an army - wailing like so many lost souls. Granted, most of her experience with that sound had been in a lab with numberless clone-sisters slowly dying to genetic faults or losing their tenuous grasp on sanity due to their unstable nature, but this was more or less the same sort of thing. Equally horrible, equally paralyzing. Fable had no idea how she'd gone from drifting off to sleep aboard the Bloody Pilgrim while watching Jedi Teras-Kasi Rebellion VI, but now she was somewhere else and she had no idea where and it was cold but not cold because she was laying in something sludgelike and warm and it was the bitter reddish color of dirt and lifeblood left to mingle and-
Focus, young soul. Her mother's voice chided - the stern, firm, but caring force in her life that would no more accept cowardice or uselessness than a messy room. You're an open target, laying on your back. Get to your feet already!
Fable pulled herself up to a sitting position, gaping at what was going on around her; an army of legs and arms and the panicked people attached to them. Some were bemoaning their fate to an uncaring green sun, others were trying to shout above the din to form some sort of organization or make contact with loved ones. Most were simply beating the poodoo out of each other, and it was this latter category that claimed most of her attention. Dangerous. Fable curled her legs underneath herself and sprung to her feet, making a disgusted sound once she realized the weight pulling her head back was all that disgusting mudblood fusing her thigh-length hair into a solid mass of muck. The same muck that'd managed to slip into her boots, her capris, her long coat, the same much that nearly covered her face. Gross gross gross gross gross-
Danger!
Fable looked up in time to see a Devronian lunge from the crowd towards her, murder in his eyes. Having spotted somebody disoriented and smaller than himself, he'd clearly elected to take out an easy target! Fable's confusion and disgust was pushed down by that shard of something red and vile that Rave had ensured be integral to her being; Fable's temper flared with indignation, her attention focusing entirely on the red-skinned man coming at her. She brought her hands up, aware that it was likely too late to avoid taking a hit. Likely, being the adopted child of two Mutakai adepts meant that taking a hit wasn't the gamechanger it might otherwise be; she'd harden herself for the blow and retaliate swiftly, ending this fight withgack-
The Devronian's whistling fist slammed into Fable's gut with enough force to lift the small girl off her feet and send her reeling backwards into the mess of people brawling around her. The Force had done nothing to dull the blow! And come to think of it, she couldn't feel the Force at all - not as the teasing, just-out-of-reach sensation it'd always been before her training, not as the teasing just-within-reach-but-ephemeral power it'd been during her training. It was simply gone! Fable rolled across the mud, the wind knocked out of her, momentarily dazed. With the Force, she was the unstable, poor duplicate of a mighty warrior.
Without it, she was a scrawny teenager, soaked in mudblood and wet leather.
For the first time in her admittedly short life, Fable's fear nearly won out over her fury. It might have, had there not still been nearly six feet of lean muscle, pointed teeth, and horns bearing down on her. Pointed teeth pointed teeth cannibal did he mean to eat her cannibal cannibal no no nononononono! Fable hauled herself up onto all fours, struggling to draw breath and get her head upright and draw draw draw get it together, Fable!
The Devronian lunged for her, hands outstretched and seeking her throat, but Fable had yet some strength in her body. She dove backwards, whipping a small knife from her boot - Force or not, Mandolorian Iron was Mandolorian Iron, and Lynn Caromed would never leave her daughter without the best weaponry she could push onto the girl. Fable set her teeth and threw herself into her heavy assailant, her sharp little blade opening a neat gash from the man's hips to sternum. His momentum wasn't diminished, but pain did an admirable job of stopping him in his tracks. Shock set in quickly, and Fable struggled out from underneath the gasping, dying man before he could properly fall upon her and continue soaking her with his spilling guts and aerated lower bowel. The Devronian - a victim of sharp little things - splashed into the mudblood with a dazed, surprised expression, his eyes glazed over as he struggled to keep his guts in.
Fable didn't have time to consider the first life she'd taken with her own two hands, but that didn't stop her from gaping at the sight of it. He'd had it coming, right? Had it coming, he'd attacked her cannibal murderer rapist killer devil trying to take advantage of the surroundings and killmurdereatrape her because she couldn't defend herself? Had it coming had it coming had it coming she needed to move, needed to move right now, needed to get away before somebody else thought she'd be an easy target. She was in the middle of an endless war, and there was no glory in war, nothing to be gained.
Fable's heavy boots slogged through the mud as she ran aimlessly from the dying Devronian, a man who's only sin had been being scary looking while trying to approach and calm a panicking human girl too wrapped up in her own fear to hear him ask if she was alright, and defending himself when she'd thrown the first punches.
