Operation Black Knight (ask if you wish to join)

[Reverance]

Team Selvaris

Grashal of the Ecumenopolis. Seriously, where is [member="Vrag"]?


20 meters, not all that much. Perhaps for a man paying attention, it might have been just enough. But for Reverance, unhinged, he was too distracted by a scurrying baby vonduun crab. With a crouch and leap, he stomped on the carapace of the skittering creature. It's legs ticking to severed synapses, he leaned down and picked some of the legs from the body. The voxyn al'do wasn't a fan of lump meat, preferring the tender interior of the claws. Standing up, he looked outwards towards the lambent field.

Absentmindedly, he placed a claw against the hand mouth and fed it. Teeth and eye opening, he felt it swell just as he heard the piercing screech of a Kanabar Hul. Orange radiated goo spurted upwards as chitin detonated outwards, a small explosion. Reverance watched quietly, eating one of the legs himself. Or at the very least, using the chitin as a straw. "Huh..." He looked around, pinpointing an extolled, as he smirked. "[You see that?]" He pointed for a moment and shook his head, feeding another leg into the hand as he looked back out. "Hell of a spot of indigestion..."

With the Voxyn Al'do eye open and perceiving, synthesia of the force flowed into it. Hungry and wanting, Reverance gripped his fist in a flex as he rubbed the growth of stubble on his chin. He began to pace, walking outside of the grashal and around the structure.

[member="Ashin Varanin"] | [member="Sarge Potteiger"]​

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Reverance"] [member="Sarge Potteiger"]

Ashin fitted her eye to the scope and scrutinized the result. A Kanabar Hul had died as anticipated, its ichor spattering over another. The harvester beasts had a taste for weakness, and nothing said weak like lean ground Kanabar Hul. The living tore into the dead. Others started paying attention. "Good pick," she breathed, resettling her gaze on the man with the pink gun. He was doing something with his hand, something she couldn't determine.

In the back of her mind, she sensed the familiar alertness of a voxyn becoming aware of her unveiled Force presence. "Keep your eyes open for voxyn," she said. "One's caught my scent."

Her crosshairs settled over the man with the pink gun. She'd seen that face in the bursts of agonized visions she received from Spencer. That face, and others, but that one stood out because she knew it. They'd killed a Lotek'k together on Osseriton. Reverance, Wrath of the Dark Lord, or so her sources indicated. In more laid-back moments she'd speculated what part of the Dark Lord's body the Wrath might be, and how many hands and eyes he really needed.

Fortifying her body against the recoil, enhancing her aim with the Force, and concealing her presence: she couldn't do all three at once, not and keep a sniper's focus. But she could still take the shot if she was using a lesser technique of Force-presence concealment. Scattering, it was called. Her presence could still be felt, but not localized; an old Jedi Academy trick favored by the Darksider Kueller. To any Force-sensitive in the area, for quite a few kilometres, the presence of Ashin Varanin rolled out cold and implacable, but not associated with any particular place. Whatever voxyn she sensed would be unable to track her, at least through that means.

She fired again, liking the results of the first shot. A kilometre away from both her and Reverance, another Kanabar Hul turned to lunch meat, and the harvesters converged. There was a decent chance the positioning of her shots would thin out the harvesters along her ideal approach vector. Maybe even draw some guards away. Her gut said to hurry, or maybe that was her rage.

"Anything else need shooting, Sarge? Or should I start walking?"

 

[Khallesh]

[member="Ashin Varanin"]
[member=Reverance]
[member="Sarge Potteiger"]
[member="Barrien Siegfried"]
[member=Cira]
[member=Vrag]

Objective: Tag everyone and carry on with some experiments after roughing up BFF's captive

"I thought it would have been longer before you caught your breath," Khallesh decided to respond as Jun led her into the dark corridor. As they moved bioluminescent lights gradually illuminated the cells on either side of them.

The Master shaper twisted her long neck to peer at Khallesh curiously. "I do believe that was another attempt at humour Khallesh Val," she said. "But do try and be a little quicker next time. But yes, that was thoroughly unpleasant."

"You didn't get fried," Khallesh pointed out.

"An exceptional point. Now observe the subjects," Jun said. Khallesh turned to peer at the thralls in the cells. The war against the Republic had left them with ample subjects for experimentation. It seemed to Khallesh that these were in varying states of enthralment. Some still had unblemished skin and retained their faculties. Others sat dumbly, coral protruding from their every inch of skin.

 

[Khallesh]

OOC/ not to hijack your thread for dev....but I'm hijacking your thread for dev.



"These are all Force sensitives," Jun explained as they walked. "As you can see we have been attempting to measure their neural responses over time as the Surge Coral takes hold. We know that at the beginning of the process they can use the Force, yet by the end even those who retain some semblance of their former selves cannot use it. This is a laborious process taking days to weeks. Do you see what we could achieve?" Jun asked. She was eager to see how the stoic Warrior would react.

She'd had one of her agents pilfer reports from her training. As a crècheling Khallesh had apparently been bright and inquisitive. Of course the regimen places upon children of the Warrior caste ensured all such traces were removed to be replaced with the rhetoric of the Priests. Jun Phaath was of the opinion that the Warrior Caste needed to evolve. They had been designed by the Shapers long ago to fight a very different war. On the edge of extinction their species had created new weapons that would never stop fighting. Yet when they attacked this Galaxy their own designs had lacked the adaptability of the native denizens to find victory. Perhaps in Khallesh she saw the spark of something that could be the next generation of Yuuzhan Vong soldiers. Not just fierce and devout, but intelligent and reactive. They couldn't leave all of the thinking to the Yammosks.

"You're trying to work out how you break their connection with the Force," Khallesh Val replied after a long pause.

"Indeed," Jun replied, rewarding the huntress with a disarming smile.

[member="Ashin Varanin"]
[member="Reverance"]
[member="Sarge Potteiger"]
[member="Barrien Siegfried"]
[member="Cira"]
[member="Vrag"]

 

[Khallesh]

[member="Ashin Varanin"]
[member=Reverance]
[member="Sarge Potteiger"]
[member="Barrien Siegfried"]
[member=Cira]
[member=Vrag]
[member="Spencer Jacobs"]

OOC/ I swear if you all don't start posting soon I'm taking Spencer away to be Khallesh' full time punching bag


"If you find out it works, could you connect a Yuuzhan Vong to it again?" Khallesha asked suddenly. Jun Phaath did a very poor job of covering her shock at the question. Perhaps it was being rattled by the Jeedai's attempts to strangle her, or perhaps Khallesh had just uncovered something the Shaper did not want to discuss.

"Doubtful," she chirruped back. "What we've been attempting is to make Surge Coral act at an exponentially faster rate. We've found a way to break it down into smaller spores that spread through the blood stream very quickly. We've even managed a version that will go through cuts and wounds and leak into the blood stream," Jun explained.

"Why not just a poisonous toxin?" Khallesh replied with a shrug.

"Political reasons."

"The Intendant Caste don't..."

"No no Khallesh. What I mean is that were the Yuuzhan Vong to start deploying bio-weapons with reckless abandon the backlash would be...troublesome. We are not so many that we can afford a Yuuzhan Vong witch hunt across the Galaxy. We're already in enough trouble for our more reckless actions alongside the One Sith," Jun explained carefully as she peered into one of the cells.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Vrag"]
[member="Sarge Potteiger"]
[member="Khallesh"]
[member="Spencer Jacobs"]

Moment of truth.

Ashin left Sarge on overwatch with the big gun, then took a minute to look out over the last kilometre of lambent fields before the grashal. Kanabar Hul harvesters were congregating toward two feeding frenzies, leaving her with a few semi-clear approach vectors. She let out a slow, centering breath and checked her pack. Two ArmaTech shield generators - she wore the third, set to double-particle - and three bundled-up Cloaks of Nuun. The pockets held the standard anti-Vong odds and ends: arsensalts, a little bafforr pollen and sparkbee honey, not much. She wore the rest: two sabres and her phrik plate, with her Tenloss Warrior helm, a death's head.

That, in general, was that. She turned on the ArmaTech particle shield, and a thin haze surrounded her body. She amplified it with a second layer: her specialty, Force protection, a layer of hardened air and Force-borne nope that could stop anything from thud bugs to Sith Magic. Three layers of extreme protection. Maybe, just maybe, enough to get her to that grashal if something serious noticed her.

She walked down the hill and kept walking, heading for where the blood trail told her Spencer could be found. Her boots squelched in the muddy grass at the edge of a lambent field. Each step plodded, thudded. Implacable, she told herself. Implacable is what you have to be. No matter how deep it takes you into the dark.

She kept up the Force-scattering, making her presence impossible to locate. Once she reached the grashal and left open ground, she could let that drop. For the moment, her job was to walk and keep walking regardless of what came her way.

 

[Allyson Locke]

Location: Being hugged by the prison Cell

The time that had passed since her initial imprisonment had been a blur. She had stopped fighting back with the lightning knowing that every time she had used it, pain would surge through her body for some reason. She was tired knowing that whatever was causing her pain was also eating her force connection. Even when she searched for her blood mark on Ashin - it felt farther away than usual. She didn’t know if she could trust it or if it was her body telling her that the Force was no longer on her side. Spencer closed her eyes and remembered the last moment she saw the woman she fought. She had called her Ashin out of delusion.

They had left her alone long enough that she was able to heal both the incisions on the back of her neck and wrist. The healing wasn’t perfect, it was a bastardization of what she was capable of doing. Looking down towards her wrist, she saw the dead biot that had been giving the readings to the scientist, then the actual place it had been attached. The scar was jagged and her skin still red, it only meant that there was a bit of infection from being exposed the way it was. Spencer pressed her lips together as the redness of the wound only justified her thoughts of infection - it explained the reason why her body was consistently hot and weak.

Or was that just her body giving up…?

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this, she was supposed to live a decent life - helping and watching Ibaris grow up and build her own legacy. Softly chuckling, Spencer couldn't help but find her dream of growing old with Ashin funny. They both knew they weren’t meant for that life no matter how much they tried. Spencer knew too well that she would die before ever seeing what Ibaris would become, Ashin as well would share Spencer’s early death fate. Was this the price she was going to pay for the ways she defied the Force and destiny with Ashin? A hefty price, but she wouldn’t trade it for anything else. Looking around, she saw that they were in the middle of changing guards, this meant she was truely alone for a few minutes.

While she had been thinking and on the verge of giving up, something hit her like a SSD crashing into the side of a planet. A violent wave of the Force ripping through the Force Dead Planet - a feeling only she could feel through the bond they shared. The one emitting this energy wasn’t particularly perfectly in tune, but Ashin wasn’t never the time to fall in line or be in harmony. The woman liked to forge her own path through the Force. She was indeed a brute. A grin spread across the blonde’s face as she looked up and shook her head. Took you long enough.

With that, she remembered how the lightning affected the armor and the Vong she had toasted. Willing her good hand’s fingers she focused entirely on the gathering of the Force fibers she could. Ashin wasn’t happy and their bond allowed Spencer to feed on the woman’s emotions. Sparks began to form at the end of Spencer’s finger tips and she soon filled the cell the best she could while also absorbing whatever energy decided to spark against her skin. It wasn’t perfect and burns started to form against her pale skin. The cell gave way in pain and she was dropped her knees. The pins and needle feeling she had felt the first time she had used the lighting surged through her body. She could feel the surge coral reacting to her use of the lightning and it didn’t help that she had shocked herself a couple of times as well. Curling up into the fetal position, Spencer held her breath focusing on whatever force she could focus on for Crucitorn. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep her from crying out and alerting the guards. Some of the spikes that had been close to the surface of her skin started to form pointed spikes under her skin. she felt them against her arms and shoulders. Whatever it was, it was growing every time she used the lightning. The pain soon subsided and she stood back up - weak, but she was still alive. Looking around the room, she remembered vaguely how she had gotten in there and where they had stripped her of her armor. Her first goal was to get her armor and lightsaber back. Bare feet padded along the hallway, taking advantage of the guard change.

Spoiler

[member="Ashin Varanin"] [member="Khallesh"] [member="Sarge Potteiger"] [member="Vrag"] [member="Cira"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Khallesh"] [member="Spencer Jacobs"] [member="Sarge Potteiger"] [member="Vrag"]

Nothing sniped her as she came into view, so she put her trust in the particle shield and eased off the Force protection. She could keep that up for a very long time, but she got the feeling she'd need every bit of strength she could muster. She kept up the Force-scattering -- that was a minimal technique, requiring little strength or attention.

Step by squishing step, she approached the grashal. And found, to her surprise, that nothing got in her way. She'd moved without visible haste, in dull armour; nothing to catch a distracted eye. The Kanabar Huls were finishing their meals, the nearest only thirty or forty metres away once she reached the huge nautiloid of the grashal. She wet her lips under the death's-head helmet and touched the side of the grashal's portal just so. "Tsii dau guvvuk," she said, and the door opened, revealing the curved corridors of a Yuuzhan Vong shaper grashal. Harsh memory begged for her attention, but she'd never been especially susceptible to begging.

Ahead and below, she felt Spencer both as a blood trail and as a disturbance in the Force. Three quick slashes of her burnt-orange lightsabre, and she dropped through to the appropriate level. Grashals were much wider than they were tall; low, flat structures almost without exception. The horizontal distance would be the killer. She'd just made quite a bit of noise, and her lightsabre was ignited. She resumed running through Force protection's mantras.

Game on.

 

[Khallesh]

[member="Ashin Varanin"] [member="Vrag"] [member="Spencer Jacobs"]

"Does it work?" Khallesh asked, intrigued. The strength of the Jeedai, their abilities, their poise and grace. All of these stemmed for their access to this mysterious 'Force'. The downside of such a weapon was obvious. Anyone fully enclosed in their armour with breathing apparatus would be entirely immune

"We're getting there, but it's only short term. So far the effects last from a few minutes to a few hours. Sometimes they're completely severed, but as one of the junior shapers rather fatally discovered, sometimes they retain some level of connections," Jun replied. She was about to open another pheromone-locked passageway when the bioluminescence changed hue.

The Master Shaper moved to one wall and pulled a small tube from a wall and gently placed it against one temple. It was one of the newer, compact forms of cognition hood Khallesh had seen in use.

"It seems we have an intruder," she said with no hint of concern in her tone.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Khallesh"] [member="Vrag"] [member="Spencer Jacobs"]

Quite.

***​

​

Here came the warriors. Thud bugs crashed into her lightsabre, or double-strength elite particle shields. (Ashin blessed the name of [member="Draco Vereen"].) Blorash jelly snared her legs, then withered as she scattered arsensalts. Bafforr pollen puffed around her, and all right, that didn't work, because screw those bafforrka bone worms but it had been worth a shot. She had the backup sabre, loaded with the Vongcutter crystal, but she kept that on her belt for more serious need. Her own sabre was fine; she'd fought Vong before. The blade flicked into amphistaff mouths, tore twining snakes from their masters' hands, cut them when they went flexible. Her burnt-orange sabre went up to eleven; it sheared through vonduun just fine, like most high-end sabres with enough impetus behind it. Guttural, familiar war cries filled her ears and she found herself responding in kind. Do-ro'ik Jeedai pratte was on the tip of her tongue, but she wasn't a Jedi anymore. That ship had sailed when Odium reawakened her Force Drain addiction, and sunk when Spencer's torture echoed in her mind from across the 'verse.

Step after plodding step, Ashin conquered the grashal. Each step took her closer to where she felt Spencer's blood trail and Force signature. Just like the Jedi, just like the days before she'd become a has-been, forgotten by the great and powerful -- today, there was no going back.

They weren't all warriors. She was killing shapers, too. No problem with that. Noncombatants could still be culpable, and between Spencer's pain and her own memories of being shaped, she knew just how much culpability there was to go around. Black blood hissed against her particle shields and made the soles of her phrik boots tacky on the grashal floor.

A hacking stroke took down a warrior, shoulder to opposite hip, and the curving hall fell silent. Ashin drew breath, and what came out wasn't human. And she found she didn't care. Spencer's name was in there somewhere.

 

[Allyson Locke]

Spencer stopped for a moment, Ashin had gotten closer. There was a surge of confidence that kept her going down the hallway that she had remembered heading down. The slime that she wore as clothing was weird to move in, but she would soon be back in her armor - that made her smile. She continued and it seemed that the guards or whoever was supposed to be keeping an eye on things have moved towards the surface to deal with whatever Ashin brought along. Taking this welcomed break from shocking the living heck out of the Vongs, Spencer made it towards the edge where a door like structure stood in her way.

There was a phrase that she had heard the Vong use, but for the life of her she didn’t have the capability to mimic their tongue. Instead, she bit the bullet and placed her hand against it and shocked it quickly. The pain was only in her arm for the time being as she bit her lip hard enough to break the somewhat healed flesh. The pain subsided and she was greeted with a few faces of the Vong who were guarding the armor and the lightsaber. Without hesitation, Spencer shot out electricity towards the vong shocking them till they fried. Once again she was met with the surging pain of the surge corals growing.

Ripping off whatever the goop she wore was, she stripped down and placed the armor back on. It was slightly heavier than she remembered, but she figured it was just because she was tired and with what the corals were doing with cutting her from the force. Her mind focused and concentrated on crucitorn, which slowly was becoming ineffective. When she felt the pain subside, she headed towards the next thing that summoned her.

That was her bloodtrail with Ashin.


[member="Ashin Varanin"] [member="Khallesh"] [member="Vrag"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Spencer Jacobs"]

Ashin's heart leaped at the sight of lightning and the sound of thunder. Blue-white radiance and ear-rattling noise rolled around the curved walls of the grashal. She threw caution to the winds -- caution being, in this place, synonymous with a spray of her own lightning to cover her back. Behind her, warriors died in an ugly was, as warriors generally did. She ignored what she'd wreaked -- a ribbed corridor filled with hacked body parts and charred blood -- and came around the bend.

Spencer.

Wearing a Vong ooze-bodysuit, clearly weakened and tired, her skin...lumpy...

At some risk, Ashin pulled away from the Force and shifted to Vongsense. What she felt in Spencer's direction turned her heart to stone. (An apt turn of phrase. Surge coral normally didn't grow this quickly; these coral seeds had been altered.) The cold fury she'd visited on the Vong poured into the mindless little coral specks that were killing Spencer from the inside. She froze them in place, commanded them to stop growing, but that was the best she could do. You couldn't unmake surge coral once it grew through your body. Removing it would take the best medical care, maybe even a Vong Shaper. Someone who wasn't Ashin.

She was beyond words; rage could make her nonverbal, though it had been a very long time since she'd been this angry. She switched back from Vongsense to the Force and swept every corridor in sight with lightning. Thunderclaps reverberated through the grashal. She slapped her neck comm, eyes never leaving her wife, and called for extraction, voice shuddering with rage throughout the clipped sentence. She gave Spencer one of the shield generators almost automatically. The moment demanded a witticism or a capstone statement or something to make sense of it all, and she had nothing.

 

[Vrag]

Her head whipped around, hard and fast and for a multitude of reasons. There was a stench in the air, and it made Ygdris coil and Lammie hiss. The stench of an infidel. But what really brought the woman to a halt were the screams, because for all their bloodthirst and warmongering, Yuuzhan Vong rarely screamed in fear.

And there was definitely fear in those cries. She knew the emotion like the back of her hand, had seen it mirrored in the glassy eyes of a thousand fallen right before they met her blade. Etched into their faces forever by a single damning strike.

But infused in the harsh inflections of Vongese? That was a sound altogether alien to her ears, and it made for entirely unpleasant a feeling in her gut as she drew whatever conclusions she could from the current circumstance. The foreign body inside the pulsing walls of the grashal was likely no other than the wife of her prisoner. [member="Ashin Varanin"].

The Hand cocked her head, and the horns of the Dhaladii curled back in a mixture of excitement and curiosity. If even half of what she'd heard about the woman was true, then fighting her would be a thrill. If all of it was true, she would likely be the fertilizer for the wetlands of Selvaris come next week. Either way, it wouldn't be boring.

Rows of sharp teeth glinted in a brief flash of orange as she grinned behind her mask, and then the firrerreo placed a calming hand on the shivering wall of the grashal, murmuring with a cadence one rarely heard in connection with the sharp tongue. A few gentle, coaxing words, and the flesh parted for the warrior with a wet, smacking sound, sealing behind her a moment later.

Her destination? The jagged scars left in the wake of lightning, bright red in the network of the grashal where they had torn through the living creature.

Soon, the intruder would pay.

[member="Spencer Jacobs"] | [member="Khallesh"] | [member="Reverance"] | [member="Sarge Potteiger"]​

 

[Allyson Locke]

Spencer was relieved to feel Ashin with her again, a calm sensation filled her despite the anger she felt within Ashin. A part of her worried for the woman knowing that this anger would only manifest more leading her closer to the dark side – it was a place she only felt according to Spencer’s knowledge when she was tainted with the sith poisons. This time though, there was no sith poison just pure anger.

As much as Spencer fantasized about their reunion, she knew it wouldn’t follow that fairy tale moment – that would have to wake till they were off this horrible planet and away from Vrag. She took the shield and listened to the only time the woman spoke and that was to extract her from this place. Next came the lightning that swept through the corridor, Spencer closed her eyes remembering the pain that came with the lightning, it didn’t come and she figured it was because she didn’t perform it. Still, the pain was something she’d remember for a life time.

Knowing she had to say something, Spencer reached out and touched lighting against her wife’s arm. “Be careful” the phrase held more meaning than just knowing that there was going to be more of a fight to get out. Pulling on the armor, she paused for a second – something was coming for them and she looked towards Ashin and frowned – they were done with the minions and the simple Vong. It was time to face something a bit more difficult. “We need…” Spencer pulled the breastplate over her head and adjusted it. She was out of breath, but she did her best to hide it. “We need to get moving again.”

There wasn’t much time to talk anymore, Spencer made note of Ashin’s slipping in and out of the Force – she would have to question that when they were out of this place.

[member="Vrag"] [member="Ashin Varanin"] [member="Khallesh"]

 

[Khallesh]

Khallesh made no reaction as her sensitive hearing picked up the muffled footsteps behind her. She turned to see the wavering outlines of two Yuuzhan Vong Hunters enshrouded by Cloaks of Nuun. "Callo, Galdo," she greeted. The twins from her Domain had worked with her many times before and she had signalled them as soon as she'd heard there was trouble brewing. They had been patiently waiting nearby out of sight. After all this was a Shai location and one could never underestimate how far domain rivalries could go, particularly when accompanying a rather plain speaker, heretical shaper.

She turned back towards to bodies behind her. Several warriors sheered almost in two, their armour still glowing with residual heat. Unfortunately Vonduun Skerr Kyrric was in no manner lightsaber proof. When enough force was applied it could give way, particularly from a strong thrust through the point. Warriors were well versed in the strengths and weaknesses of the Jeedai these days.

"Find them, track them from a distance," she commanded. "They must have a ship."

There was a subtle shift in the light as the pair saluted and then went on their way. Twins were relatively rare amongst the Yuuzhan Vong. The pair had been marked for greatness from a young age. Khallesh knew that under those cloaks the twins looked remarkably different now. One had been escalated in the image of Yun-Harla, the other Yun-Yammka making them a living tribute to the Twin Gods of war. The arachnostaff tightened its grip on her shoulder. A broad grin spread across Khallesh' face. A very great Jeedai warrior was nearby. Perhaps the greatest test she could hope to face. What exceptional timing.

[member="Spencer Jacobs"]
[member="Vrag"]
[member="Ashin Varanin"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[SIZE=14.6667px][member="Spencer Jacobs"] [member="Vrag"] [member="Khallesh"][/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“You do.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]In this moment, Ashin didn’t resist herself, didn’t put limitations on what she felt or what she was liable to do. Her Force-scattering vanished, letting her presence localize. The Force warped around her, an involuntary twist of wind and noise and distortion, as she tugged her backpack from her shoulders. It held a shield generator set to double-strength particle emission, and two Cloaks of Nuun -- biological bodysuits, moderately painful to put on, capable of hiding Spencer from sight and sensors. There was a comlink in there, tying Spencer to the approaching stealth ship. It also held the altered spare lightsabre, the one with the lens that could let it cut amphistaffs, Vonduun armor, and basically anything else Vong -- including the back wall of the torture chamber. Spencer wasn’t much for lightsabres, but she might need that to get out, depending on the kind of obstacles she encountered. Ashin’s mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out. Words refused to take form.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Her Tenloss helmet’s sensor overlays suggested life and motion, and she turned to one of the passageways, where lightning-scored bodies lay smoking. Just past the bend, someone was out there. A presence she’d felt secondhand, through the innate bond that connected her to the tortured woman who wore her alchemical wedding band. That bond had carried glimpses, visions, sensations throughout Ashin’s trip here. A face -- the woman looked much like Ashin had once looked, a lifetime ago. Maybe one of her many clones (though she didn’t feel the buzzing pressure of a clone’s proximity), or maybe just coincidence.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Recognition brought stillness. The Force efflux, the raging emotion, everything vanished like the moment of calm before a seismic charge detonation. Silence within and without, on which the occasional gasp and whimper from a fallen Vong could gain no purchase. Their cries scrabbled on the obsidian wall of implacable quiet, and then were still. She’d brought three shield generators; this one was nearly depleted by endless thud bugs and amphistaffs. Fresh scars marked the matte surface of her armor, revealing glossy phrik. She switched out her generator for the last one and set it to double-particle as before. She [/SIZE][SIZE=14.6667px]could [/SIZE][SIZE=14.6667px]make physical-aspected shields strong enough to block Vongstuff, but she couldn’t sense it coming with anything more than the instincts of a fighter who’d faced Vong before. The shield was to cover her back, in a figurative sense. Like the Force protection she could raise at a moment’s notice, it clung to her outline and fuzzed to nothingness somewhere around the blade emitter of her lightsabre. Normally, for pride’s sake and to leave her enemies without excuse, she wore only simple clothes and carried only a lightsabre when she fought a serious duel. Armor and shields were for pitched battle. Pride didn’t factor into it, not at this level.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]With the stillness, the cold clarity, she found pure relaxation. Her standard state before a fight, but this time without the limitations of disinterest. Bloody phrik boots clop-clopped on the grashal floor.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]While the enemy was still out of sight -- waiting around that bend, maybe, to see if Ashin would sense her and try anything -- Ashin took a moment to switch from the Force to Vongsense and get the measure of what the enemy carried. Adapted Vonduun crab, multiple organisms rather than the standard single creature; that likely meant no armpit weakness. An amphistaff, fiercely bonded to the owner; no idea whether that was stock or not. Something odd about the helmet creature, a different kind of Vonduun maybe. A handful of other things, not much of significance so far as her rusty Vongsense could detect. She switched back to the Force. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Don’t Valor me,” she murmured, the helmet making her voice tinny. “No matter what.” Surge coral didn’t grow nearly as quickly as Spencer experienced, and it sure as feth didn’t feed off her Force use. Something else was going on, some kind of spliced creature. Spencer had been used as a lab rat.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]That, in the end, was what tore it. The rampant disrespect. They’d conquered a quarter of the galaxy together at one point or another, when these people were children. But it had been clear enough in her mind’s eye that they hadn’t recognised Spencer, hadn’t known who she was, hadn’t known a thing about Ashin. That might have deterred them from torture -- a process that seemed to have had no purpose apart from the determination to break Spencer’s flippancy and defiance. Ashin had become a has-been, and her name had lost its power to protect Spencer. That just wasn’t acceptable.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Nor was the fact that Spencer had been taken while fighting for the Republic, as she’d done many times before, and yet the only Republic people who’d made any kind of effort on her behalf were her brothers. Who might or might not be carrying out their end of things on the defense station. Ashin had never cared for the Republic, but she’d never actively attacked them. That would, perhaps, change. For the foreseeable future, however, her attention would remain on the One Sith. Starting with this one.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]She’d been known to talk at length sometimes, but never in combat. Monologues and repartee were for people who didn’t mind splitting their attention. Whenever someone started talking, Ashin used that time. The jumble of thoughts that had rendered her nonverbal was gone, washed away in the quietude of intent. If she was going to die here -- and she had to accept that as a possibility, just as she’d accepted it throughout this mission -- her last words wouldn’t be some railing accusation or futile defiance, no indignation, no bragging, no list of accomplishments. She wouldn’t proclaim her lineage. She wouldn’t speak or think of Masters and Emperors and governments humbled, singularities walked, souls bound and freed, rivals trampled, dimensions riven, thrones taken or broken, oversectors conquered, warfleets shattered, campaigns won, decades lived, titles taken and abandoned. No need to say or recall that various great names among the One Sith had served or been tutored by her (and her students, and their students, and [/SIZE][SIZE=14.6667px]their [/SIZE][SIZE=14.6667px]students in turn). None of that had explicit relevance to the moment; braggadocio was a language that fell on deaf ears and wasted time besides. Everything she intended to tell the woman in vonduun plate could be better expressed without speech.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]She took stock of her own state of mind. Relaxation without lassitude. Focus without tunnel vision. Accepting awareness without distraction. Fury without agitation. Intent without fantasy, without specifics. Mercilessness without cruelty. Coldness without tension. Contempt without underestimation. Commitment without a whisper of fear. Silence, purpose, impetus. Satisfactory.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Ashin raised her blade and stepped around the bend.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Only moments had passed since her helm first detected the woman in the lightning-scarred corridor. She cut a figure, she knew. The sharp-cornered fleurs-de-lis of her plate armor, daubed in black Vong fluids and streaked with silvery exposed phrik. The smooth death’s-head of a Tenloss Warrior Helm, a poor match for the armor’s aesthetic. The sabre blade casting its burnt-orange light across the corridor of the dead, daubing them in a vicious sunset. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Go, Spence.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Her career had been, at times, overly verbose. As potential last words went, those would do. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]For a fight, this section of grashal was decent, but no better than decent, an in-bent L-shape of corridor and chamber entryway. The corridor ended where Ashin stood; to her right was the entryway she’d just come through. That put rounded walls to her left and about two paces behind her. Behind the Vonduun-armored woman, the corridor bent away gently to Ashin’s right. A few dead warriors were scattered around, smoking in earnest; the Tenloss helmet blocked their scent from Ashin’s nostrils. A pall of smoke hovered just above head-height. The curving corridor, from its endpoint behind Ashin to its long stretch behind her enemy, was a ribbed tunnel of gray biostone, maybe six paces wide and four tall. Enough room to swing a sabre overhead, not enough to leap overtop of your opponent without exposing yourself to something lethal. Enough room for both of you to fight with your back to the wall, and still be able to advance or retreat a little. It would do.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]She took stock of that in an instant as her eyes lost focus. Some instructors claimed you should keep your gaze on the forward knee, or on the eyes, or on the hands. Some instructors had spent too much time teaching and not enough time fighting. True, awareness of the knees was paramount; most impetus started with the feet, and knees were crucial to that. But focusing on one body part, rather than retaining an accepting awareness of the whole picture, was a good way to get yourself faked out and dead.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The stance Ashin took, in the moment after she came around the bend, was loose and noncommittal, even sloppy. Sabre up to guard her chest and throat, two gauntleted hands on the hilt, hinting at weaker coverage for the lower body. Feet moderately wide apart, left forward, weight evenly distributed. No hardness: that would slow her. Hardening a stance or position was for the moment of impact, and that hadn’t yet come, though it might a heartbeat from now. [/SIZE]

 

[Reverance]

A hungry and menacing expression, a stern gaze with the lift of the brow. A hand, blackened tones of the vornskr, pressed against the flesh of a Gramutek. It lived, it breathed, it consumed. This particular one had attempted to sate its hunger on metal and durasteel, frames laden within the duracrete, and had produced the chrome exterior more closely resembling the Well of the World Brain. This was the first of the now littering gesture of dominance by the Legion, suffocating the planet of it's resources for conversion. And even now, immobilized in steel and coral, the armor moved like scales against a dragon. Enough to fit a hand in, just to lose it with the crushing exhalation. But he wasn't here for another offering to the Yun'O, no, he had much grander intentions. The sort born from boredom and the loss of religion, the sort given as offering to something greater. Mania.

Stepping to the panel, the archway sphincter standing closed, he pressed his hand forward in communion with the Dhuryam. With a quiver that ran the entire breath of the monster, passage pheromones in tune with his scent, the fleshy entrance quaked and begrudgingly opened. Stepping in, he felt the swelter of heat pierce through the armor, to the very bone, and immediately began to sweat. So much energy, constantly pulsing, he assumed position digested food in the belly of the beast, producing indigestion. And now finding static pause and thought, he approached the array of Cognition Hood. Direct line to the Dhuryam, the Warmaster smiled as he cracked his neck, lifting the helmet and cords from the stand of bone and flesh. Placing it on, a smile turned into a grimace, as the mind was quickly overwhelmed with aimless purpose. Orientation towards feeding and making the feeding all the easier, he shook his head and navigated the implicit thoughts of a thing soon turned against the hand that fed it:

[Belek tiu] (command me)
[Dhuryam] (world brain) He whispered through a minds eye, a conduit unseen for no one to perceive. [Duwin tur Chom-Vrone.] (release the Chom-Vrone)
[Puul] (no)
[Krel os'a hmi va ta] (expletive, defiance in the face of overwhelming odds) The code phrase provided, the lattice structure within the Gramutek spun upon the center spindle, as Reverance pulled the helmet from his head. It was an innate end game, given through simple set of offerings. Body, mind, and words. In the Legion dialect, the cogs were put into an irreversible motion. As were those of every other Gramutek on the planet, which numbered in the thousands.

Stepping away from the control panel, Reverance walked forward and looked at the Villip Choir Field. In an organic display of holograph, he reveled in the image of the Gramutek. The Chom-Vrone born from its base, ever consuming and feeding the yaret-kor, yaret-gavvuk, dovin basal, and dovin bastiks. These things would now litter the armored surfaces of the gramutek, preparing for an explosive display of power.

Clapping his hands together, as to remove the proverbial dirt from palms, he approached the sphincter door. And with a wave of the hand, it acquiesced to his leaving, and he strode out with a certain air about him. He was done with the misuse, he was done with the treatment of the Legion Yun'Do as simple tools for warfare. There was more to them then simple utility, a cultur wiped away for the progress of an Empire. And whether by his hand or by the hands of the Shapers of the Legion Yun'Do, it would not persist.

[member="Vrag"] | [member="Ashin Varanin"] | [member="Khallesh"] | [member="Spencer Jacobs"]​

 

[Vrag]

The grashal needed no encouragement to lead her towards the intruder, and one would have to be blind to miss the wide swath of scorched flesh said intruder had left in her wake. Normally, Vrag didn’t pay much mind to collateral damage – par for the course with what she did for a living – but when the collateral damage was screaming in anger all around you, it was hard not to notice.

The walls pulsing around her were thick with ire, and she would’ve surely suffocated in their tight confines, were it not for the oxygen reserves.

Come prepared, or don’t come at all.

Her witty internal monologue was cut short when a probing entity brushed against her, and for the first time Vrag realized what [member="Khallesh"] must have felt like when the firrerreo had first spoken in her mother tongue. Brutish and crude and largely ineffective.

It did reveal one thing, however, and despite her moment of enlightenment, the Hand of the Dark Lord never ceased to be her pragmatic self; she latched onto the mind as it retreated back to its mortal vessel, baring her teeth with triumph as she followed it home.

Without a second’s hesitation, Vrag tuned back into the throbbing anger of the grashal all around them and gave it a conduit; a target to direct all that simmering fury at.

But she held it back.

There was a rumble across the whole world as she stepped out of the wall, not with the smooth, silken movement of a snake, but with a purposeful stride of someone with a mission and a goal. [member="Ashin Varanin"] was merely an unfortunate obstacle in her way.The reverberations of what [member="Reverance"] had done – or bid the Gramuteks do – ran through the core and the crust and all the way up the roots of the surrounding grashal, and Vrag felt it shudder with something between fear and delight.

Her focus, however, only intensified with that knowledge settling in her gut, and the woman did not falter as she advanced down the corridor with even steps; one, two, three— when her boot connected with glassy floor of the grashal for the third time, the firrerreo would finally let go, sending a bump of knotted, undulating flesh-spike from the ground underneath Ashin’s forefoot.

Without hesitation, she would then snap her blade forward, pulling her back foot flush with her fore before following the tip of the lightsaber into a lunge directed at the woman’s bulky helmet.

Given her advantage in reach and the surprise lunge from the wide measure, Vrag would aim to pass under and to the inside of her foe’s guard, stabbing her through the visor while still covering her open line with her own blade.

She’d always had a penchant for efficient solutions.

[member="Spencer Jacobs"]​

OOC: Late post is late. Sorry guys.​

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Vrag"]

Ashin couldn't sense her enemy in the Force, and no local would waste focus on Qey'tek or Art of the Small during a fight. That implied, fairly strongly, that the vonduun-armored woman was doing what Ashin had done a moment ago: switching from the Force to Vongsense, either for awareness or for command. And since Ashin manifestly carried nothing Vong, that left command. Plenty of dead warriors could have left this or that biot around. Clearly, something was coming.

The something turned out to be an eruption from the floor, directly underneath Ashin's forward foot, the left. The spikes didn't do a thing to Ashin's phrik boot, but the point of it was to throw off her balance. She'd kept her stance loose and noncommittal for this exact reason: when faced with a tank, everyone's first play was to attempt to break her root. As the floor shoved up against her sole, she shifted weight to the right foot, slid her left back in so the heels clicked, and back again to mirror her previous stance. One smooth motion. That, at least, was what her lower body was doing, all muscle memory. It didn't give her much room behind her, and it was a surrender of ground, but so be it. Ashin's focus was on the incoming blade, and the classic Makashi lunge behind it. A move like that covered a lot of ground, quite quickly, even with the flicking disengage that threatened to impale her face.

The issue, of course, was that, while the woman facing her was fast and technically skilled, the move she'd pulled was bread-and-butter Makashi 101. What kind of fools had she been facing? Well, such things worked as often as not, in fairness. There'd been competition fighters who'd won seven or eight times out of ten by just blitzing across the ring and unloading a single kick in a moment. Fear not the man who's done ten thousand kicks, fear the man who's done one kick ten thousand times. It was a good lunge, it was a good tricky disengage, and deflecting it only required a slight movement of Ashin's blade to the left. That movement came naturally enough from the torsion of her lower body. The tip of Vrag's weapon skidded across Ashin's lightsabre blade and glanced off the side of her helmet. The incoming sabre scored a bright line across the bulky durasteel.

It was pretty much impossible to switch between full-bore Vongsense and the Force in an instant. That left Ashin connected to the Force and Vrag, for the moment, not. And though Vrag wasn't currently part of the Force, Ashin's Force-related combat skills had never had much to do with reading her opponent. Every true Master of the Force eventually faced a choice between power and insight. Luke Skywalker had referred to it as the difficulty of hearing a whisper when you were shouting all the time. Ashin had made her choice a very long time ago.

Ashin's hips shifted, turning to the left as the sabre blades hissed beside her head. Vrag hadn't committed terribly hard to the lunge, but getting the momentum to make another good strike required a recovery, a redistribution of weight. As Vrag either did that or something else, Ashin slid her left foot in, knees still slightly bent, and transferred all of that lateral momentum into a snapping sidekick. Phrik was light enough to allow it, and hard enough to give the side of her right heel the power to shatter vonduun crab. And for this particular moment, now and only now, she was faster and stronger than Vrag could match.

Like Vrag's thrust-and-disengage, Ashin's step-and-snapkick was pure vanilla. But pure vanilla worked an awful lot better against someone who was committed forward, feet in a line, with no side-to-side movement capability. And though it would have been nice to fold Vrag over her foot, Ashin was aiming for maximum speed. Meaning her kick's target was the shin that, until an instant ago, had been carrying up to seventy percent of Vrag's weight.

 

[Vrag]

Vrag let her ongoing momentum twist her hips as she dropped her stance in the knees the very moment her foe moved, left hand snapping down with the motion to stop the kick with an open palm. It was delivered every bit like an attack, and with the power of Vrag and Skerr Ygdris combined, the downward strike would carry an massive amount of force into the knee of the extending leg.

Sure, she was running the risk of breaking her wrist, but she’d take a karked up offhand over a karked up knee any day; doubly so when it came to combat.

Without stopping, the Sith would keep her line closed with the previously established third guard as she would push off the ground with her forefoot far back into recovery, fingers trying to wrap around the plates of [member="Ashin Varanin"]’s armor in an effort to yank her front leg along for the ride.

If successful in her second — and much harsher — attempt to upset her foe’s balance, Vrag would utilize the environment to her advantage again, this time sending a broad, blunt spike straight upward from the floor of the grashal, aiming for the usually poorly protected crux of the legs.

Oh, yes. It was a groin shot, by yours truly. Is anyone surprised?

Contrary to popular belief, women don’t have it much better. In fact, it could be said that the sensitive clusters of nerves make it so much more painful. Maybe she’d even get to break the public bone… fingers crossed!