Forest Fires

[Acaadi]

Acaadi brought himself to an abrupt halt. The entire bridge shuddered as the trandoshan landed in front of him. The enormous reptilian species had fueded with the wookies for millenia, but he was shocked to see such a brazen act now.

He sense the surprise emenating off the trandoshan hunter. They were suddenly all over the settlement using stun guns to put down the townsfolk. There had not been a slave raid on the wookie people for years. He was told that it hadn't been so long since thousands of wookies had died in the One Sith invasion of the world.

What he did not feel from the trandoshan before him was any fear. It just coldly raised its stun rifle. Acaadi felt a flutter of panic as he pulled his training saber up.

Snap-hiss went the blade as it sprung to life, bathing them in green light. It was joined by a flash of blue and he barely deflected the stun shot. He heard Kyra struggling behind him, but he could turn back to help yet.

 

[Kyra Perl]

In all her training, Kyra never really considered what would happen if she wasn't given a chance to react. Or maybe she had had her moment, and she had just lost it by not being intuned enough with her lessons. A spike of fear shot through her as she stared down the barrel of the raised gun.

Don't get caught by slavers. Practically the only thing her mother had only vehemently taught her.

Well. Not the only thing.

The creature pulled the trigger. Kyra flinched, instinctively pulling up a force field around her. The shot reflected off of it with a zing. Kyra relaxed, mentally giving a thanks to her mother's patient training. Kyra may have flaked home a lot, but that didn't mean she hadn't been practicing.

She screamed, propelling the creature off her with a massive shove of the force. He went flying over the railing and sailing down into the abyss. Krya heaved for a breath, standing up and undoing her blasted saber, which had been caught up in her belt. Bloody thing! A force-assisted jump had her sailing onto Acaadi's walkway between the trees, her saber raised above her head and basking her in a purple light. She came soaring down from her arc and bopped the lizard on the head.

She looked nothing if not peeved.

 

[Acaadi]

Acaadi backed away, keeping his saber vertical and drawing it across the space in front of him to deflect the trandoshan's stun bolts. He was thinking too much. His body knew these steps and knew that he just had to pick his moment to win.

This wasn't like the training grounds. There his opponent would tap out and his master would pay him a complement. Acaadi would walk away with a smug smile on his face and the duel was done.

Not here. This was an aggressive slaver hissing and spitting as he closed the space between them. Wookies were being hurt. Families torn apart. He should have taken his moment but instead it fell upon Krya to come at the trandoshan from behind. Her purple blade stuck the back of the slaver's scaly head and he fell like a sack of potatoes.

"Thank you," he said earnestly. Her annoyance wasn't reflected in his face. Acaadi looked on the edge of panic. Not there yet, but struggling to wrangle with the situation. "We've got to help the others. I can hear a ship!"

 

[Kyra Perl]

“Slavers,” she told him, vehemency in her voice. She hated slavers. They were disgusting, despicable creatures! Not that she ever met one. But still!

She threw herself into the railing, looking over the edge at the carnage. The lizard men had abandoned all pretense of stealth and raiding huts without care of the damage. She could see the light of several other safety sabers wizzing about in the distance, but even then their numbers were small compared to what she had felt sliding down the trees moments before. And what did it matter that they were here.

They were just padawan. Kyra didn’t kid herself, they weren’t stopping this with brawn alone.

She looked around wildly, the panic and pain from the minds around her threatening to overwhelm her senses. “The-the ship!” She pointed upwards, the idea coming to her in a jolt.

“Kill the ship, keep them here!” Help had to be on the way.

Without waiting for him to respond, she ran and jumped off the tree. Keeping her momentum with the aid of the force, she pushed upwards off the bark, to a higher limb. Just like they had joked about.

 

[Acaadi]

"The ship. Okay then."

Black eyebrows went up and then down in acceptance of his fate. It was what his people believed in, that everything happened for a reason. You could determine your actions but fate and the Force had a plan.

It felt more like Krya swept fate up in her wake and he was just going to have to hold on for the ride. He ran and leapt, touching lightly against the tree before launching himself away. Back and forth they went until they reached another walkway.

The freighter was hovering next to the nearest cluster of platforms. Limp wookies were being dragged back towards its boarding ramps. Acaadi heard a blood curdling cry.

An old grey-haired wookie charged across a different bridge, wielding a pair of Ryyk blades. An elderly wookie who had once been a berserker. He cut down the first trandoshan, almost splitting him in two. The other slavers turned around and fired stun blasts that barely slowed him. Then next volley were real bolts, cutting the warrior down.

Acaadi had never seen anyone die before. He gripped his saber tight and thumbed on the blade. This had to end.

 

[Kyra Perl]

“No!” Kyra cried out, the scene catching her attention as well. A helpless noise escaped her throat, the girl perched on hands as she landed.

She found it hard to reanimate, her eyes wide as they found Acaadi’s through the chaos. A tear slid down her cheek, her mouth parted in unspoken emotion.

This had to end.

She nodded at him, finding her strength to stand. And charge. Her saber drawn, she reflected the bout of shots that turned her way. One skimmed her robes, burning a path through. Breathe, Kyra. Her shoulders dropped, the tension forced out of them as she let herself tune into the force around her.

The next round was lethal, all deflected as she charged at the two guards of the ship. The guards fell to a flurry of purple light, the moment blurring for her.

She turned for Acaadi, simply expecting him to fall in behind her. A force shove knocked the blaster out of a nearby slaver’s hand, covering Acaadi’s back.

 

[Acaadi]

Do not give in to anger. It was a message that was hammered home over and over. To give in to your emotions was to give in to the dark side. When explained in a classroom or on the training floor it seemed an easy promise to make. Faced with what he saw before him it was much more difficult.

Emotion seeped into the base of his gut. It tightened his fingers around the hilt of his saber. For an instant, he felt the Force change its flow as it moved around him, through him. Their warnings suddenly became real too and that was all that kept him from reaching for the offered power.

He charged after Krya as she left two slavers in her wake. He reached out with his left hand, turning his palm upwards. The next trandoshan was thrown upwards, hitting the ceiling on the inside of their ship hard.

The engines of the freighter thrummed. Trandoshans clearly deciding to cut their losses and take the wookie they had on board.

"Get on the ship!" Acaadi shouted, not even considering the consequences.

 

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra had much less sensibility about her. She always did when she got in fuss. The chaos echoing off the trees around them... the panic of others reverberating around her chest... There was a reason Kyra kept leaving academies. There was no thinking through it, only her trying to stop it all.

She obeyed Acaadi in a heartbeat, reaching within herself and pulling herself across the distance with the aid of the force. She skidded across the ship deck, her hand held out to defy the ships mechanics and keep the closing bay door open. But she wasn't the one with amazing skill in telekinetic, and it the gears started to grind and work against her.

She cried out, unwilling to loose Acaadi in a moment like this. The nature of the force changed around her as well. Desperate for Acaadi's aid, she grasped at the bout of proffered strength. The gears grinded to a halt, granting Acaadi a chance to slide through unscathed.

 

[Acaadi]

He almost lost his saber as he leaped. In slow motion he saw it slip from his grip before he caught the ring at the base of the hilt on his index finger.

He just made the landing, skidding past Kyra and tumbling into a roll. Acaadi came back up onto his feet lightly. He flicked his saber into the air with the finger hooked into the belt ring, catching it and thumbing it back to life.

Acaadi stood firm to protect her back as the doors closed but no one came to challenge them. There was just an empty corridor ahead. He could feel the life forms here. So much anger and fear. The ship juddered beneath his feet as it started to pull away.

"We need to convince someone to land this ship."

 

[Kyra Perl]

"Yeah, like that wookie convinced them to let his family go?" Kyra peeled herself off the ground, her hand shaking ever so slightly as she thumbed her saber back alive as well. "They're not going to talk to us, Acaadi. They're slavers." Kyra was a glass half full gal about everything but this.

Sith? Going through something.

Thieves? Hungry.

Prostitutes? Vastly misunderstood.

But slavers? Evil. Get rid of them. End of story.

She stormed forward towards the hall, propelled by all the fear awaiting there.

"You know how to fly something like this, right?" She paused to kneel down besides the lizard man Acaadi had knocked unconscious previously. Her fingers pried his blaster from his hands, fussing with the settings. To stun, or...

 

[Acaadi]

"I was planning on being...forceful diplomacy," he explained. It was said that the presence of a Jedi Knight was enough to change the course of a negotiation. He was no Jedi Knight, but the point of a saber could be convincing enough on its own.

"If I have to, I might just be able to land this..." he said in warning. Acaadi might have trained in small shuttles but this was a freighter. The trees on all sides gave little room to maneuver.

"I wish I could count how many were on the ship..." Acaadi watched ahead, not looking at what Krya was doing with the blaster. One could listen or shout. Acaadi could shout, bend the Force to his will and lift great weights - or trandoshan - with his mind. He was less adept at reaching out to study his surroundings or feel the echoes of the future.

 

[Kyra Perl]

"Eight," she replied crisply. She paused, her brows furrowing. "Or nine." She realized in that moment how off kilter she was, barely even reading presences clearly. Her movements stopped. With every bit of will power she had, she forced herself into deep breaths.

"Right. Forceful diplomacy it is." She tried to make the anger bleed from her body, but it cropped up with every reminder of the distressed wookies on board. She set the blaster to kill, then strung it on her waste band. "But if diplomacy fails, or they put you down, I'm shooting them. I'm not letting them have us." She made a promise to her mom on that.

She stood up again, shaking out her hand. "This is... very different from training," she commented, her clipped. She was nothing like her usual self in this moment, and if one was being honest, she didn't know why.

 

[Acaadi]

"That's..that's an understatement," he whispered. He crept to the next corner and peeked around it. The way ahead had been sealed with a blast door.

Acaadi said a word that would not have been acceptable around the academy. A blast door was, as expected from its name, impossible to break through with a blaster. A lightsaber could cut them slowly, but there was a problem.

"This is on training mode," Acaadi grumbled, looking down at his saber. "I can't cut through." Unless Kyra had an idea they would have to take another path.

 

[Kyra Perl]

"Wow, we karked up," Kyra whispered, turning in a small circle. Not only had they charged head first without consideration for... well everything, they were also now well out of their depth. And alone. And apparently not half as good as keeping a level under duress as they thought!

Okay, maybe that was just her. But still.

Kyra forced herself to keep taking long, deep breaths. To any outsider, she had to seem deranged. If she didn't feel the utter distress in Acaadi's chest, she would have been embarrassed. Instead she found strength in his presence and kept on breathing.

"Think. Kyra, think," she whispered, her eyes skimming the room around her. What would Yula do? "....The ducts?" She offered, no confidence to her voice. She defaulted to Acaadi in this moment, believing without a doubt that his age and level head led to more experience. He'd get them out. The way she looked at him shined with the faith of it.

 

[Acaadi]

Kark.

She was looking to him to make the decision. No one had trained them to deal with a slaver raid. Even though the Jedi had to deal with some of the most dangerous situations. They were expected to go to any lengths to safeguard the people under their protection.

Training was building blocks. He knew how to deflect a blaster bolt and how to duel. No one had shown them how to infiltrate a freighter.

He looked down at his lightsaber. There were always rumours that a clever student could alter the harmonics of the field and make a training saber deadly. Even a training saber had a kyber crystal at its heart. Acaadi was one of those annoying students who excelled in nearly every lesson but even he had no idea where to start.

"Ducts," he agreed. His left hand balled into a fist and the panel fell away from the ceiling. "I'll go first," he stated, but she would probably beat him to it anyway. The duct was tight, but would at least get them past the blast door.

 

[Kyra Perl]

She let him go first.

Once he was up, she followed with a swift jump and clunked her elbow as she went. "Ouch," she complained, rubbing at it as she waited for him to crawl far enough for her to have enough space. A sense of staleness filled the air as they shuffled through the tight ducts, both of their anxieties apparent to her. It was easier to calm herself down focusing on his emotions and not her own, and so she did.

"Silver Rest will come intercept," she murmured reassuring up to Acaadi. "They'll fix this, we just need to stall it." And they could do that much. They already were, technically. She sensed he wouldn't want to respond, she could feel how tried to coil his emotions into his chest and be strong. She made no attempt to break down that wall, quickly placing her hand on his ankle instead to change topics and stop him.

"We're through. Drop us down here."

 

[Acaadi]

She was right. They must have passed the barrier presented by the blast doors now. He edged forwards to the next grate. It as reinforced, but not enough. It cried out in metallic pain as it buckle and clattered to the floor. Acaadi quickly pulled himself through the opening and into the corridor below. He landed lightly, igniting his lightsaber with a snap-hiss.

Another plain corridor. Same unpleasant scent. They had been a busy group of slavers, cramming their hold full of frightened creatures and taking them across the galaxy for slave labour. Acaadi felt another layer of his control starting to buckle. He looked to Kyra and then back at the door.

"That wasn't so.."

He felt the warning through the Force, but it came too late. A flash of light and he realised his limb were held firmly in place. He saw everything through a bright white haze. A ray shield trap.

"Hard...Kark," he swore.

 

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra landed lightly, a sense of achievement bubbling in her chest before- She squeaked, absorbed by the light.

She thrashed like wild, cornered animal. It was all to no avail. The beam held strong. “Oh for the love of-“ Kyra dissolved into fowl language never previously heard from her before. But it was all futile. Her heat beat rapidly inside her chest. Her resistance melted away, leaving Kyra panting and suspended inside the beam.

“Um... Please tell me they covered something like this is your super de-dupper advanced training.” Her voice shook a little, the objective of keeping a level-head during this chaos forgotten. Now it was just about survival.

You see, they might have gotten in over their head.

Her gaze locked on the doors down the hall, reading for the lizard men to come through any minute. “A plan,” she squeaked. “We need a plan.”

 

[Acaadi]

His anger was thoroughly crushed by a sense of panic. Acaadi had never been in a real fight of any kind. There had never been anything on the line but pride. They talked in the academy about sacrifice. There were tales of the greatest jedi and how they gave up their lives to protect people.

He had nodded and agreed that it was a noble thing to do. It was something that he had assumed might happen, but when he was old. In his thirties or forties perhaps. Not now.

Acaadi closed his eyes and recited a jedi proverb silently. He hadn't expected much, but as he turned his focus inwards he felt some of that panic dissipate. It was still there, waiting for him to slip. At least now it wasn't completely debilitating.

"We look for an opportunity," he said, trying to sound confident. "They can't shoot us through the ray shields. They're either going to take them down and shoot us or try and take us captive. When will our moment be..."

The last sentence was barely uttered. It was a question to himself, to the Force. It wasn't for her to answer.

The door ahead slid open. Three trandoshan strode in, hissing in their peculiar language. Acaadi was given a very real appreciation of how tall they were when one of them strode up to within inches of him. The slaver bent down until they were eye to eye, seemingly getting the measure of Acaadi.

One of them shouted something angrily. This felt like it would be the moment. He gathered the Force to him for a telekenetic blast as soon as he was freed.

A rickity protocol droid limped into the corridor. One of the trandoshan slapped it around the back of the head and it nearly fell over. They hissed at it.

"My masters would like to know if you have parents who would pay for your release..."

Another round of hissing and what sounded like a burst of laughter. Acaadi felt a chill up his spine.

"...otherwise they can open the hatch and blast you out into space."

 

[Kyra Perl]

In space? Were they already in space then? Oh crap. So much for stalling.

While the first part of their plan crumbled and failed around them, she leaped with blind faith into Acaadi’s supposed wisdom. After all, he was older. He knew better. Right?

Right.

Kyra knew without a doubt that her mother would respond to the call. Also doubtless was the fire she would rain down upon the dirtbags waiting for her money bag. Calling for her mother was undoubtedly the safest choice and would ensure both of their survival.

But for the enslaved Wookiee’s? It would be too late.

Kyra swallowed hard, biting back an edge of ego that had been growing as of late. She wasn’t gonna cave and come back to her mom’s arms crying, she was done with that childish stuff! She didn’t need her mother for this. Nope. She would save the Wookiee’s, and both their butts, on their own!

“Guess you’re just gonna have to space us then,” Kyra told the droid, her gaze unwavering as she stared at the lizard who had been doing the talking.

“We’re orphans.”