[member="Elpsis Elaris"] [member="Tempest"] [member="Charlyra Araano"]
The Nikto guide, Esterle, brought his speeder to a halt within a knotted grove's shelter, at the edge of the swampland. "This is as far as I go," he said, "and you couldn't pay me to go farther. Besides, the Alliance has brought liberty and heavy walkers to Abomey one detonation at a time. I should check on my friends, make sure they're all properly liberated and duly grateful." He grinned, a sickly kind of expression, and gestured toward the deep swamp. "Two pieces of advice for you, Shira?"
Ajira closed the speeder door and adjusted the pack on her back. "Because you've been so tightlipped with advice up to this point?"
"The woman in there, she will not want to talk to you. You're an offworlder like me, no matter how we call ourselves allies and friends, yes?"
"I'm all right with that. That's one."
"Abandon your preconceptions. As I've been telling you, go in there without a predetermined sense of what to do, how to fix the situation, if fixing is what you're here to accomplish. Be a searcher, not a planner. Find the right answer by listening, not by your sense of how things should be."
"Unlearn what you have learned, you're saying."
"Exactly."
"That's two."
"There is, perhaps, one more piece of advice I'd give you."
"Colour me stunned, Esterle."
The Nikto smiled and looked like he meant it this time. "Go quickly. I'm no Force adept, but even I can get a bad feeling about this place, and the Galactic Alliance will be sending people for our raging friend, yes? In concert, perhaps, with the military might they've just deployed on my home for freedom purposes?" He gestured around at the misty trees, the dense murk. "They will come to liberate the swamp, perhaps?"
"Not an unforeseen possibility." She took a moment to ensure that her Force signature was still concealed as well as anyone could conceal it, then nodded. "Thank you for your guidance, Esterle. Your help has been invaluable. If you ever need work..."
"Oh, what would I do off this planet? It's not mine, but it's my home. My love. No, I'll never leave." The Nikto grinned again, and the speeder shot off through the trees. Ajira turned and headed deeper into the swamp.
A storm kicked up, tearing mist from gnarled trees and smoking swampwater. The Dark Side of the Force was at play, but it didn't feel like Sith. It felt like the jungle-mind of Korun, the pelekotan, the wild. Blood fury and hot pain. Ajira bared her teeth in a grin and kept moving forward, one slogging step at a time. A distant perimeter of swamp nexu was escorting her -- she saw them for the first time when the mist vanished, though she'd suspected their presence. The local Darksider was aware of her. For the moment, Ajira was not the subject of an assault. Maybe that came down to curiosity, maybe instinct.
The storm rumbled overhead. Rain began to fall heavy, soaking Ajira to the skin. She still wore unremarkable local clothes, half native and half offworlder. Wet from the downpour, though, the wrap and shirt darkened and plastered themselves to her wiry middle-aged frame until they felt like a combat bodyglove. And didn't that bring down memories, the blood she'd spilled. She wondered idly how many lives she'd taken, even just in person, not even counting ship-to-ship combat or orders she'd issued on a strategic level. Just face to face, how much blood had she spilled? By how many orders of magnitude did it eclipse the deaths this woman had caused, her and her animals?
She'd been apprehensive of the swamp nexu pack -- large, strong, potentially Dark-empowered, and numerous -- but that thought stripped out all apprehension. If there was a genuine monster in this swamp, it was currently slogging through muck, favoring the limp in its right knee, and missing its blonde wife. Comforted, Ajira limped along.
The perimeter of swamp nexu vanished into the downpour. The rain was heavy here, pouring through the unresisting leaves of a broad tree. In the shadow of the trunk, behind curtains of rain, stood a woman, a local. Ajira couldn't make out the details. For her part, Ajira pulled up a bandanna to hide the lower half of her face.
"You should have a fire," Ajira said, loud enough to be heard over the rain. "Find some real shelter. No reason to be out on a day like this."
"You are out."
"To find you, and trust me, I'd rather be indoors. Are you Virtue?"
The figure shrugged. Behind her, in the rain, a nexu slunk past. "And if I am?"
"Let me ask you something, Virtue. How trapped do you feel?" No answer. Ajira stepped under the tree's dubious shelter, still not close enough to see the other woman's face. "How many options do you see?"
A mirthless laugh. "I am what I am, I do what I do."
"And I respect that." Ajira shoved sodden braids out of her face and tucked them behind her ear, then adjusted her bandanna. "I'm hoping to convince you that there's more to life than siccing mind-controlled predators on random offworlders."
"So you are the one the Alliance sent."
Ajira's turn to laugh, then, and she meant it. Off in the rain, a nexu stopped walking and looked at her. For a moment, just one, Ajira released the masking that concealed her Force presence. An old, cold, implacable aura filled the space beneath the tree. She bared her teeth in a smile as Virtue flinched. "I have no doubt the Alliance will send someone for you, Virtue. They do that sort of thing. My guide here, he told me it would probably be soon. He has connections." Ajira tilted her head back the way she'd come, toward Abomey, but didn't take her eyes off the younger Darksider. "The Alliance has been pacifying the city, so soon makes sense to me."
"And what, you come to take me away from all this?"
"I don't know for certain what motivates you, what your goals are, if any. I don't know what your hopes are or where you could use a hand or if you'd be willing to accept help. Frankly, I don't even know why you're talking to me. You've got a storm to manage and a pack to run and some Alliance types to kill. I don't know what's important to you, but on the off chance you're interested, here's my offer. Safe transportation offworld. Training. Allies. Money. Weapons. Knowledge. Your choice among any number of operations, causes, directions, people to kill. Is this offer of interest to you?" Rain dripped off her nose, and she held her breath.
"You've come a long way to hear me say no," said Virtue.
"Can I ask why?"
"This is home. This is my course." A shrug, a flash of brown shoulder. "So they come for me. I know they come for me. Maybe they take me, maybe I go deeper into the swamp and they get bored. Outlanders tend to get bored and leave."
"The Alliance isn't like most, I'll warn you of that right now. There are a lot of fanatics in their ranks, people convinced of their own righteousness. Folks like that will follow you to the ends of the earth and drop you in a cell overlooking an active volcano. They'll let you rot there while they preach to you, and the only way you'll ever see your home again is if you become one of them. Wear their clothes, eat their food, speak as they speak, feel as they feel, touch the Force the way they do and no other way at all."
The younger woman let out a long breath. "My answer stands: my course is my own. Perhaps I'll come to you in time."
"That's all I could ask. If you survive this, get offworld. Go to the planet Balowa, in the Daalang Sector. You'll find a place called Lake Krul, surrounded by twisted trees and animals steeped in the Dark Side. Under the lake is a shrine built from the spiral shell of a Greater Calama. Inside the shrine, you'll find my people."
"Krul, Balowa, Daalang." A nod, though Ajira still couldn't make out Virtue's features. "One day, maybe. For now, I think you should go. What name should I give your people, if I find them in the shrine under the lake?"
"Ashin Varanin."
"Ahh." Virtue turned her face up, and a confluence of leaves doused her in accumulated rainwater, as if in a ritual ablution. A cleansing before the final confrontation.
-Exit
