First Reply Reaper and the Taxman, Fool and the Road

[Ellie Mors]

Q I I L U R A

c. 902 ABY​

ABANDONED QUARTZ MINE​

NOON​

Enough time had passed for all of them that the second crisis in the Netherworld had nearly become a distant memory for the galaxy, a fading thought compared to the destruction of worlds experienced by its people in the time between then and now, but it was uniquely tethered to Elle's very existence in a such a way that it was difficult for her to forget - or remember. Droplets of water left subdued echoes as they fell alongside reflective cavern walls, the cool but stagnant air of its subterranean depths reminding her of the one that had briefly became her tomb. It was a morbid thought, one best left discarded like painful memories should, but it was always there - a flash of light behind the lids of her eyes every time they were shut, the sickening crack of stone and roar of collapsing rock that reached a crescendo the moment sleep reached her. It took an unbearable amount of counseling, of sleepless nights and waking terrors, for her to even begin to process the fact that she'd experienced self-inflicted death despite being very much alive.

A memory that was made during a moment of foolish bravery in an attempt to put down a truly evil man that turned itself into her greatest trauma and fear. It would have been an understatement to say that it took quite a lot out of her to step out of her comfort zone - out of her home - at first, just as wandering into this abandoned mine on Qiilura required an incredible amount of resolve on her end. If she could see the sky, even through a window, then life was bearable - she'd long since come to terms with being alive again - but here, underground, the trauma of being buried alive in a tomb of her own making felt almost fresh and her anxiety peaked in unspoken agreement. It wasn't necessarily a fear of experiencing death that filled her, either, but rather her mind's seeming refusal or, perhaps, inability to comprehend that the moment she remembered had long since passed.

The green hue cast off from the glow of her lightsaber reflected back onto her off of the quartz-covered cavernous walls as she walked, her feet carrying her further in for no other discernable reason than to face her fears and either overcome them or break. The force clothed her, warmed her despite the cool draft of the abandoned mine, and encouraged her towards the former - though the planet's somewhat near proximity towards a burgeoning holdout of the dark side worked to do exactly the opposite. In all it was a humbling experience, a reminder that she was still vulnerable - still small - and that she'd need the force to be whole, especially now. She had mused to herself, before her descent into the mine's depths, that a younger Elle on Bastion might've considered this an exercise in futility.

'I'm glad I've grown since then.'

 

[Liorra]

What an awful place for the ship to crack on, Lio thought to herself. She hadn't had any particular place to be but getting stuck on a rock like Qiilura of all places, which may as well have been a backwater world (it was). Definitely not what Liorra had in mind when she was going to 'go find herself' as she told Mia Monroe in a rather painful conversation sometime after her storming out of the Oyubaat. Lio had a mind to talk to Jenn Kryze of Onderon soon enough, but she wanted to try something else. Which was to seek neither the Manda nor the Force in the way that the Mandalorians and the Jedi would demand.

The short of it, she just needed space, a lot of it between her and Mandalore. Her droid beeped and chirpped, "I know, I know I should've charted out an actual route, stop naggin' me will you?" Whined Liorra as she threw the spanner onto the durasteel floor, "damn flux capacitor." She cursed and sighed as she looked over at the droid. "No, no I'm sorry, sorry, Rek. I'm not mad at you, more mad at myself." The Crescent Serpent's silence was about all Lio could take. Rising from the ship's floor she grabbed her jacket, and walked past both her training saber and her beskad.

Her loth-cat Starlight meowed.

Lio turned on her heels and headed to the galley, and smashed a button on the automatic feeder that rested on the counter. Then walked past the training saber and beskad, only this time she grabbed both on her way out. "I'm going for a walk," where exactly she didn't know. Activating the tracker so she could find her way back to the ship later, Liorra set out on foot.

Qiilura wasn't a world to just go on walkabout on, but there she was on walkabout. She just needed to clear her head, a lot had happened in a short amount of time and she needed to process it. How she ended up in an underground cavern she wasn't sure, but it definitely triggered memories of Yavin. At least this time she wasn't being chased by hordes of undead. Unaware that there would be anyone around or of just how echo-y the cavern was. The teenager just started speaking aloud, mostly to herself, and in mando'a. "Er warye, slanar par a kemir, hra'ne bora Lio. Jii gar cuyir tahla'ada echoy'la o'r a limu'ra, jate bora, jate bora." An exhale as she looked down at the tracker, well at least it was still working but it wasn't exactly lined out with a map of the cavern. Lio was not expecting of course anyone to be around as she continued on, "utreekov."

Ellie Mors ​

 

[Ellie Mors]

Maybe it was a sign that she really had needed to get out and stretch her legs when she heard the voice of a stranger being carried through the cavern before being able to feel her presence in the force - or maybe she never really was quite as up to snuff on the matter as she should have been. Her pace slowed, at first, and she deactivated her saber so the dull thrum of its blade wouldn't keep her from overhearing whatever it was that the approaching figure meandering through the cave some distance behind her was saying. The almost imperceptible click of her saber being clipped to her belt was met with the subtle grind of her heel against the smooth stone underfoot as she turned back towards the direction she'd came to meet this stranger face-to-face.

There were no telltale signs of hostility that she'd expect from someone tailing her - not that she had any reason to believe that anyone would've kept tabs on her given her lack of affiliation with any of the Jedi orders or their various offshoots the galaxy over, particularly given her very public death a serious handful of years prior. The light still effortlessly clung to her, as well, so the murmuring she heard that steadily became more clear the faster she walked was seemingly untied to the darker fringes of the force - however it became obvious rather soon that the language the girl, based on the stranger's voice, was speaking was not basic.

Vague memories of her youth in an academy of Sith decades ago on Bastion stirred that suggested it was likely some form of Mando'a - or at least something similar.

"Lost?"

She offered the question the moment she could make out the shorter figure from her own vantage point at a bend in the cavern, herself leaning against a pillar of quartz that lined the cave wall along the corner. The lightsaber remained clipped at her side, having decided that keeping her weapon out of sight and out of mind would help keep her from sending the wrong message to whoever this new arrival was. Steadily she lifted both hands up to show her palms as a gesture to show she wasn't going to put the girl in any danger.

Liorra

 

[Liorra]

Lio became startled at the sound of someone else's voice she immediately began to reach for her beskad when the person approached with hands in the air. They asked if Lio was lost, and she wanted to say, "no." Oops, the word slipped out, and so she corrected, albeit nervously, "yes, wait, who are you? What are you even doing down here?" The young girl stood up straight but kept her hand on the hilt of her beskad. Lio made note of the lightsaber clipped to the stranger's side. This could easily be just a ruse to rob her, or whatever the hell criminals did, do, did... shit she was nervous. "Nynir gar kovid ra er Jetii?." Lio motioned to her head whilst speaking the gesture indicated hitting ones head.

You're a Mando without a clan, a loner and that always spells trouble. Lio thought to herself, Mandos rarely went without their clan, wayward ones were always trouble. She wondered how much of that applied to her now, she had walked away just as Elise had done. "You uh, you wouldn't happen to know how to get out of here, would you?" She questioned the stranger, "or do you just make it a happen of running into young girls in dark caves, caverns... caves." Lio questioned somewhat accusingly.

Ellie Mors ​

 

[Ellie Mors]

Scared? No, nervous.

She could feel it roll off of the girl like one could feel heat move through the air, and it seemed she was right to play it safe from the start. A born empath, experiencing other's emotions herself was something she had to grow up with and learn to get used to - and the transition from Sith to Jedi required her to relearn how to cope with that all over again. She didn't need to guess just how suspicious Liorra thought she was from her own understanding, she could tell that her question immediately caused her to move from inward frustration to unease and discomfort. "Elle, but my friends call me Ellie." She answered back, calmly, while she considered the best way to explain why it was, exactly, that she was here in the first place.

She very quickly settled on the truth with very little pause for time given.

"I'm afraid of, er, caves so I came here to face that fear."

Her head tilted to the side soon after, though, as she offered the girl a confused look in return for the gesture she was given that she could only assume was in reference to being hurt on the head - and, given she was kind of sure that she hadn't had an opportunity to hurt herself to give any visible clues that might suggest that she had, it more or less resulted in some minor confusion. "I'm sorry, I don't speak the language." Ellie said, not comfortable with basing a verbal response on an assumption. Fortunately the girl switched back to basic for what she had to say next, much to her relief, and fortunately for the stranger she did have a rather surefire method of getting back outside - her sensory abilities were rusty, sure, but she was still skilled enough for her to see the way she'd came from through the force with a bit of added focus and effort on her part.

"Do you have a habit of finding strangers in caves?" She asked, rather sarcastically. "It's a long story, but I generally try to keep myself out of confined spaces that can wind up with me buried in them. If you want I can show you the way out and give you a shorter version of it - the story - while I do."

 

[Liorra]

Liorra still uneasy over the encounter acknowledged the introduction and returned it with one of her own. "Liorra, friends call me Lio." Oh you have those now? She sarcastically chided herself cause last I checked you sort of threw that away when you walked out. How could she go back after that? The intrusive thought reminded Lio just how much she needed to get back to her ship. "Eh?" She questioned, who didn't sp- right, "sorry, forgot not many outside of the culture know the language."

A fear of caves? Well, she supposed there were lots of things people were scared of. Before she could recount or say what a good way to counter the fear, Ellie explained a little more and added a sarcastic touch which just made Lio chuckle. "Uh, no, no I don't last time I got stuck in a cavern there were hordes of undead and I may have punched up the ... cavern with a telekinetic bomb." Lio cleared her throat, "but I was under a lot of duress, so, um that's not happening now." Lio gestured with her hand, "so you know getting buried alive thing probably won't happen with me around."

If only by proxy because Lio definitely wasn't going to let herself get buried by a bunch of rocks. That thought alone was terrifying, but on the offer of getting back to the surface, relief could be seen in her posture and voice. "Yes, that would be... would be fantastic actually, and um you don't have to, of course you want to... the story that is." Relaxed and hands away from her beskad, Lio approached Ellie and with a bit calm was able to sense the Force around her. The younger woman's brow furrowed, "you're not with the NJO are you?" The question was a little harsh. Do you even know who you are? You're trying so hard to be everything all at once and you've got nothing, no clan to speak of, you don't even have a lightsaber just a kid from Monastery.

"So uh, which uh, which way is um... you know, the way." Lio inquired doing her best to distract from her own thoughts.

Ellie Mors ​

 

[Ellie Mors]

She smiled at that.

It wasn't something most people understood, sometimes she wondered if Sylv herself knew the rationale behind it even, but discussing trauma was cathartic for her - even if it was the trauma of death and what came next. On certain days she felt as though the warped passage of time within the Netherworld was real, as if she was an old woman remembering her life and not the person living it, despite how contrary to that reality was, and talking things that had been painful while fresh was suddenly quite the opposite. "I'm not with any order, actually." She answered matter-of-factly, almost sounding pleased with herself. She gestured towards the direction that Liorra had been coming from and started walking passed her, followed not quite long after with a second gesture to follow. "I am a Jedi, though, but not whatever sort it is that caused you to ask." Elle added.

Her nose wrinkled at the implication of that, the idea that some young girl could find a reason to be so wary of a particular group to such an extent - and a Jedi order at that.

"Just in case it needs to be said, it's still safe to follow me."

Ellie shrugged at that, though, and decided to cut deep into the point of her story that she otherwise would've spent her time getting to. "About caves though, I died in one." She said, bluntly. Maybe it wouldn't make a difference, or maybe it would, but her experience with people who'd assumed the worst of Jedi informed her decision to be as open as possible, as quickly as possible - she'd been raised, brainwashed, by the old Sith Empire into believing the Jedi were everything that the Sith had truly been all along. It'd only been the vulnerability of an actual Jedi, the first she'd met face-to-face, that had shaken that hard-held belief. "That's the short version, anyway." Elle said after a brief pause.

"It was.. I suppose for someone else it would've been maybe ten years ago? Hard to tell, really, time is a bit.. difficult.. to understand on the other side."

It was what was most traumatizing, honestly: being able to have passed on, anguished over it, and then, over what felt like such a long period of time, processed and accepted it - only to be pulled from the Netherworld and back into this one alive. "I was looking for someone I love dearly, someone taken from me, and it brought me to a Sith lord that went by, or goes by, the name of Darth Carnifex ." She started to explain, slowing the pace of her walk as they approached a fork in the path to make sure she'd take the right one toward the surface. "We'd met and fought before, above the planet Csilla before it was.. lost." That was a hard memory to resurface. She didn't expand on it further, continuing instead with the story as her pace picked back up again.

"We, uh, fought. Again."

There was discomfort there, visible by the slight shift in her body language as she vividly remembered the exact moment she realized that he would outlast her in their duel.

"In a cavern." It didn't need explaining but she said it anyway. "It wasn't until the near the end I realized I couldn't .. help.. him. So I ran out of options, and by then I was nearly out of time - stamina."

Another pause, this one pregnant.

"So I buried us both."

 

[Liorra]

"Huh," was all Lio could manage at the response from Ellie Mors when she said she wasn't with any order. "Jedi's without orders are kind of like Mandos without a clan, the way of the Ronin... or no? MaybeI'vereadtoomanyAtrisiancomics ." She followed after Ellie careful to trace the other person's steps with caution. Along the way she kept an open mind and ear, listening to what the Jedi had to say. Lio looked up with good timing to see the gestures that Ellie had made. "Sure, sure," for all Lio know she could be heading to her doom, but that was the skeptic talking and not Lio. The teenager was diligent as she followed the path, and when Ellie just dropped what would have been a bomb on most people. All she could do was respond, "mom did that once, decided she didn't like being one with the Force and hitched a ride with my auntie. Not sure how that worked but well considering mom and Auntie Alessandra Creed figured it all out."

Lio gestured to herself as evidence that her mother had indeed figured out how to become corporeal again. She couldn't begrudge the woman leading her to safety for now divulging everything. "Mom apparently took out all the blackwing that had been infecting my aunt, and it was well, it's blackwing." She then made a face and gesture about the undead. "So there she went, and then did not all at the same time. She tells this story much better, but anyway, yeah I bet the whole being dead was probably super traumatizing." Then a beat, "seems like you've got enough rizz to res yourself though, so there's that." Lio's tone far more casual than she realized but was too busy with her eyes peeled on the cavern floor than much of anything else.

"Ten years ago I was a kid on Monastery, running around villages and the Jedi Temple there, I couldn't get enough of the library and archives. Y'know the Rave Merrill Archives? Tons of information, learned a lot about galactic history that way," she commented the idea of someone being gone for ten years didn't strike her as too odd. Her Mandalorian mother Shia was often gone for long periods of time. Came home to teach the 'important' Mandalorian stuff and then was off again. "Still, that's a long time to be gone, whole galaxy changes at the drop of a cred these days."

Darth Carnifex was certainly a name Lio knew of from her books, "oh I know about that guy, super scary Sith Lord. Big guy right? Rave wrote about him, and so did a bunch of other Jedi from her time and after. Of all the Sith to run into, it's him? Force almighty, you're pretty lucky to be standin' about, Netherworld or not."

"You mean before it," Lio made a gesture with her hands and a sound, "y'know those Maw types really like doing that to planets, they tried that on Tython, y'know." As if Ellie wasn't aware, and if she wasn't she was now. She listened intently and noted the pause between sentences, she actually looked up to see if Ellie was still there. "Kinda reminds me of that time on Yavin with the undead, I told you about, except you double downed instead of up." Lio commented as she continued to follow the Jedi.

The teenager remarked, "sounds like you can either stay away from the y'know Dahk Lawd of de Siff, or muscle up and beat him up. Like Thurion Heavenshield , that guy's a bloody legend, you know of'im? His fights with Darth Carnifex are the stuff of legends!" She added somewhat excitiedly. "You know how long those two have been fighting? Also, don't read everything on the holo about them, some folk right some really cringe fanfics of them, totes don't, save your eyes, Ellie. Save, your, eyes."

 

[Ellie Mors]

Liorra 's right, ten years isn't that long - or it shouldn't have been.

"I'm familiar with it." She answered, wondering just how much larger the archive might've grown by now - not that she'd ever been, but she once had a friend who would tell her all about it, or at least the things they'd read in it. Elle was more of the kind of person who found herself in the sorts of situations usually put into writing or digitized audio and the like, not that she wouldn't mind it being the other way around every now and again. "I think.. I think he was a little more lucky than me, in some ways, and not in others." Ellie said quietly, almost wistfully, at that.

'Lucky to have a second chance at killing more people?'

Wordlessly she shook her head as if to say no, 'Lucky to have the chance at redemption some wouldn't have gave.'

She made a face at mention of the Maw, though, but didn't have anything to say towards that - she'd promised Sylvia Virtos that she wouldn't get involved with them when she'd been pulled back from the Netherworld by her, and she'd kept that promise. They'd imploded over Tython anyhow, with seemingly no need for her involvement in the first place. "Thurion was a bit of inspiration." She agreed, happy to have the conversation steer somewhat further away from darker topics, though she did have one thought she wanted to voice. "But I think we both have had the same restraint when it has come to him." She couldn't suppress the laugh that came at the thought of scandalous stories on the holonet of the Thurion and Carnifex - she was technologically inept, for the most part, but she could guess what it was that the teenager was getting at.

"I wouldn't even know where to look."

Ellie moved her right hand up towards the cool surface of the rock wall on their left, not quite slowing down so much as tensing up as she seemed to focus a little harder - perhaps the reason for her rather abbreviated answers. "We're nearly there." She offered, seeming to lighten up after taking her hand back. "As for Darth Carnifex - I think I'm a bit less worried about him than he is of me, assuming he hasn't developed a conscious just yet."

She grinned, though there was a little bit of either regret or sadness hiding underneath her eyes along with it.

"I wanted to bring him from the dark into the light, that was my failure - if we were to fight again I think it'd be close..."

There was an exhale, maybe one of thoughtfulness - but it sounded like relief, like letting go of something held onto for just a little while too long.

"But I'd win."

 

[Liorra]

"Oh sure," Lio commented off-handedly, "maybe that was before he went to the Wellspring. Like, the wellspring, the font of the Force or something like that. Sure, some folk tried to stop him, think Thurion and the Nobles." The teenager paused, "heh, sounds like a band." She resumed her little ramble, "But uh, don't think restraint is something folks should have when it comes to Sith." She was matter-of-fact about her own beliefs, "not a lot of good comes from those guys." A slight pause as she placed her hand on the same spot on the wall that Ellie had. "Well, except my aesthetics, gotta give them that."

"You doin' alright? You look winded, or tense," the teenager arched a brow, "do we need to sit, have a sip of ... air, or uh pop a pill, or whatever it is old people do to not have pain. Mia just sorta dealt with it." Lio said of the al'verde Mia Monroe and then sighed. "I might have a stim on me if you need it." The young girl checked her tracker, "yep definitely getting closer, tracker's beepin' faster. If you need a way off this rock I got a ship and some room. I'd take you to Coruscant but no one needs to be a Jedi to figure out that place ain't gonna last if the Dahk Empiah has anything to say about it."

Lio noted the sound of relief in Ellie's voice but continued on with her perspective on things. "Y'know, I think the only real way to deal with someone like Carnifex is to just delete'im but I don't know anyone who's got a weapon that could do that, or if they'd even be able to use it before he unalived them from the galaxy." The teenager tilted her head curiously as she watched Ellie walk ahead of her. "Hey you know I can show some great places for not cringe fanfic, have you read any of the ones about Ashin and Spencer? I mean for a couple of Sith their romance is legendary. I mean okay, I guess some Sith are okay but I'm almost sure most of the stories on the holo are super romanticized, like no one can eat a whole volcano... can they?" She inquired wondering if that holosite about the 'real sith' was legit or not.

"Oh hey, did you ever say which way you were going after this?" Just out of pure curiosity of course, "hey have you ever heard of Siobhan Kerrigan? Mia told me she might be my grandmother, said it explained a lot of things but never said what, exactly." A pause, "did I ever tell you about the time my mom fought the Taeli Raaf and called her a Rent-a-Ren and lived? Was when the last time ... or ... a time that Coruscant was sacked." Now that Lio got to thinking about it, she hadn't rambled so much since when she first got to know Mia. She had been this quiet kid before leaving Monastery but since she left home. Lio had found that she had awful lot to say not that she didn't before, but there wasn't much to say on a world where you knew just about every other person, or they knew of you or your family.

"Anyway, if you're gonna actually fight Carnifex and win, you gotta have some backup plans, say, how are you at fighting without the Force? Tracker's kickin' up we're gettin' really close, you sure you don't want to sit? After all, you spent ten years in the Netherworld."

Ellie Mors ​

 

[Ellie Mors]

She was beginning to understand why so many people with children seemed so absolutely exhausted all of the time. Before she'd decided how to explain what exactly she meant by restraint she was peppered with some entirely different topic - and then the next. It was, if she had to decide on a singular word to describe the feeling, tiring but it was absolutely refreshing given her usually conversation partner when she wasn't with Sylv was herself.

And she certainly wasn't as talkative now as she was when she was Liorra 's age.

"I'm, uh, actually not very good at using the force." She admitted - at least not in the way that most of the people who'd made their names known as Jedi or Sith and the like tended to be. Push, pull, or even just feel someone's presence in general were quite a bit more challenging for her to do, not because her connection to the force was weak, but conceptually she couldn't quite understand how it worked. A Jedi master had once described the force as limited by their imagination to her, when she was just a little older than Liorra was now, and every time she was given a similar question to this one now she thought back to that and wondered if it'd been meant as an insult. 'The one muscle I never worked out, huh?' Was the thought that popped into her head this time.

"It's, er, a bit easier to use if you know what you're doing with it. Hearing a bit better and seeing a bit better, or moving a bit faster and hitting harder are things I'm good at."

She gestured towards her head.

"I was never quite good at the whole thinking thing, requires a bit more effort for me to really power through something that's a bit easier for people who're, for lack of a better explanation, smarter."

Stay humble. A lesson to live by, and probably the only reason the force clung to her like fire did to wood. There was going to be another quip thrown in there, or maybe a joke, but the conversation had already shifted gears and changed topics again - 'Dark Empire?' - and then again in quick succession. She had an answer on how to deal with the Sith himself, as well as any of the others that might've sprung up in the wake of Tython's near destruction, but it wasn't really something that would make much sense to someone who hadn't been in the same shoes she'd been in at the time she'd last fought Carnifex. "I don't think my fiancé would appreciate me reading smut novels about a pair of Sith, unfortunately." She noted with a hint of a smirk, picturing that look of disapproval that might've been worth provoking if only for her reaction.

"I did not-" Elle had only just managed to say before Liorra turned the topic towards several other names in quick succession that she had only vague recollections of, though she didn't quite understand the correlation between the relation with Siobhan would've had with explaining things - or how someone wouldn't know who their grandmother was if their family tree was still intact. "But I also hadn't really made a decision yet, either." She interjected the moment she found a lull in conversation, which was quickly followed by more speculation about how to deal with Carnifex.

'I've heard his name more times in the last hour than I have in sixteen years.'

Maybe it was a sign to get back into the swing of things, perhaps even literally. She glanced over her sh0ulder, an eyebrow raised as she fished out a pair of sunglasses from the small pouch that hung at her side, then turned back towards the mouth of the cave as light seemed to pour in. "I've been out of the game for a long time, y'know? Hanging back, building houses and other charity work, stuff that keeps me out of trouble."

Sylvia Virtos was going to be so mad at her for this.

"Maybe it's time to use my lightsaber again."

 

[Liorra]

Like most teenagers, most of what Ellie managed to say either went over her head or sat in for a spell. What got Lio to grow quiet was the mention that she wasn't good at using the Force. "Huh?" Stunned, almost speechless, almost at the idea that a Jedi wasn't good at using the Force. In fact, Lio was silent up to the point where light poured into the cavern. She couldn't imagine someone who wasn't good at using the Force and happened to be a Jedi. "Wait." She put her hand up a moment, "not good at the Force?" Lio gave Ellie Mors a quizzical look and then her expression shifted. Stepped up into the light but then turned to face Ellie.

"You don't need to think when it comes to the Force," she explained, and then further elaborated, "at least that's what mom always said, she said it was about feeling and trusting those feelings. That's what made being the kind of Jedi she was dangerous, because she used her heart and didn't box her emotions up like some Jedi do." As the light became brighter and brighter, Lio's voice softened, "it was all about heart, to do what felt right, felt ... natural, which is why the Force is limitless, it is everywhere, it's all around us. The Force is in every being."

"You know, maybe you should come with me, it's dangerous out here in this galaxy alone. Besides, I'm sure your... fee ann cae would want you in one piece. Whatever a fee ane sae is. My mom said she and ma just decided to get married the ol' Mandalorian way which apparently is a very quick ceremony and not exactly permanent either." Lio still couldn't get out of the idea that someone could be both a Jedi and not good at the Force. "Well at least one of us has a lightsaber, I don't. I just have the ol' stick in the rock, training saber but for more serious situations I got my beskad."

The droid and the Loth-cat could be heard in the distance. "Anyway, back to what I was saying, it's about heart. Your strength in the Force isn't just physical, it's also spiritual, emotional and mental. It's everything, everything that you have, you can use in the Force. You know what they say, if it was that easy, everyone would be able to do it. And while yes... there is an absurd amount of Force users these days. Not all of them are capable warriors, mhmmm maybe you just need the right Jedi Master. Y'know I happen to know a guy, names Coren Starchaser or we can ask my not-grandmother, I guess Force 'mom' uh Romi Jade she can probably help too. They're both great."

"Now that we're back up to the surface, did you need that ride? Rek and I can get you anywhere," she mentioned before turning to face forward as the tracker's beeps grew progressively louder and closer together.

 

[Ellie Mors]

She felt a tinge of warmth come to her cheeks while she slid the sunglasses in her hand onto her face, her light eyes a tad bit more sensitive to the sunlight than she'd like. "I probably did a poor job of explaining what I meant." Elle suggested, though she doubted that the teen understood quite enough about what the force actually was to really get more than just a gist of what it was that made her so uniquely terrible at certain applications of it while decidedly not in others. It was rather amusing to hear the exact same sort of lecture she'd heard a million times over by much more experienced, and older, Jedi, though. Liorra certainly had the right.. heart.. to be a Jedi, if she was thinking of the right turn of phrase. Maybe it was charisma, she couldn't be quite sure but it was rather reminiscent of something that she couldn't quite place.

"As for me and my Fee-A- I mean fiancé -- we haven't quite worked out all of the details yet. I think she'd rather be in charge of most of that kind of stuff, it is her day." She said, though to be honest it was more-so that Sylvia was the only one of the two of them that actually had many, or in fact any, friends. They'd both been orphans but Elle had gone into a rather solitary life for the latter half of her teens and had only resurfaced just shortly before a long series of events that led to her death, Sylv had, on the other hand, long since came out of her cocoon by the time they met again on Csilla. Thinking back she'd even been with someone at the time, something she didn't think that she, herself, would've been ready for if it wasn't in the rather adrenaline-filled and PTSD-fueled urge to fly into someone else's arms after seeing so many people vaporized in that planet's explosion.

'Happy thoughts, Ellie, literally think of anything else.'

Right, the teen talking her ear off. "Look, Liorra, think of something you're naturally talented at, something you just get, and then think of how you'd explain how it is that you understand how to do whatever it is you're good at." She said as she slowed down a bit, they were outside now after all, and eventually stopped to turn towards the girl. There was a better explanation coming to mind now, one that she had been able to communicate to Sylv when they were both the same age as Liorra. "How hard it is for you to explain that is how difficult it is for me to understand what someone means when they try to show me how to, say, twirl their lightsaber in the air and fight with it using telekinesis, or how to shoot lightning from their fingertips. I hear the words they're saying, I see what they're doing, I just don't understand how that makes any sense."

She walked over towards the cave they'd just stepped out from and threw a fist into the rocky side of one of its walls, the one closest to them. Rather than finding herself stopped by its obvious durability by being made of stone and earth, the rocky surface gave way to her fist and shattered with a hail of dirt and debris into the cavern's depths. Sure, her knuckles were somewhat bloody from a few scrapes left at the impact, but it got her point across, she thought. "I do understand how to make it work with things I already understand, like making myself stronger or faster."

Shatterpoints was a bit of a harder explanation, but she had always chalked that up to something she just simply understood rather than something she'd figured out.

"And, honestly, I don't need to be good at using the force - I trust in it and it guides me when I need it most."

She shrugged, rubbing her knuckles with her other hand. Mentioning the times she'd literally been possessed by the force and became one with it had always felt like a bit of a taboo, something she didn't walk to talk about even with the singular person she was closest to - something that she was maybe, honestly, a bit afraid of in the same way a certain Sith lord had been quite disturbed by seeing it happen, too.

"But I'll, uh, take the offer for a ride."

 

[Liorra]

Liorra arched a brow and watched a rather impressive if somewhat dramatic, according to the teen, display of power. "Ha, that's where you're funny. I'm not naturally talented at anything." Anything Liorra knew had been a taught skill, she never considered herself 'gifted' at anything really. "But I guess I get what you're saying, it'd be like me trying to explain something Mandalorian to uh, non-Mandalorians which I'm not all that good at." She wasn't sure the Force was something people could or even should try to comprehend. However, she kept that part to herself, and narrowed her gaze between the now shut cavern and Ellie. This was one weird Jedi, but Lio had to admit they were starting to grow on her even if maybe they just needed time with a great Jedi Master to really unlock their potential.

The teen took lead this time walking toward her ship the Crescent Serpent, built off the old Razor Crest model. The ramp was still lowered, which was good as far as Lio was concerned. "Well, I don't know if good is really a phrase to use for the Force," Lio knelt down just enough for her Loth-cat to leap up onto her shoulder. She turned to face Ellie Mors and continued on, "but yeah, it's always there to guide you when you need it, at least for those willing to listen to it and not make it bend to their will."

"This, by the way, is Starlight, and that over there is Rek." Lio gestured toward the astromech as she began to ascend the ramp. "The ship ain't much but it does the job. Feel free to hunker down wherever, you got a place in mind that you need to go? Cause I don't really have a place, just sort of wandering the galaxy at the moment." Starlight jumped down from Lio's shoulder and onto the ship's floor whilst the astromech beeped both in greeting and in conversation to Lio.

"Oh and for the record, Elle, Ellie, right? Uh, I don't read smut. I just know where and how to find it, because fandoms are w e i r d."

The droid beeped back and forth whilst it looked between the new person and Lio.

"What's that Rek? Oh right, Rek that's Ellie we're gonna just take her wherever she needs to go." A pause, "oh she's a Jedi, so we're good."

Content enough with it the droid went into the cockpit and began the ship's pre-flight check as the ramp began to fold in.

 

[Ellie Mors]

There was a subtle nod, her example wasn't the greatest - she wasn't really that great at communicating things in her head, at least not complicated things that didn't really make much sense to her - but it seemed like the point more or less got put across. Liorra was probably also just as right in her own view, though, as Elle was, neither of them really understood quite how the force worked but it was certainly a failing on Ellie's part that she couldn't quite grasp how people did what they did in a way that she could replicate in any more skill or finesse than a novice - at least not things that she didn't seem to intuitively, or perhaps instinctively, manage on her own.

She wasn't an orthodox Jedi by any means, after all.

"That's true enough, sounds like you've got a good head on your shoulders." She said, the subtlety of her nod replaced with a second and more encouraging one in response to Lio's more open-minded follow-up. In reality it was a wiser line of thinking than quite a few Jedi that she'd known and encountered throughout her life, a little more true and genuinely close to the force itself and quite a bit removed from the frankly dogmatic approach many orders seemed to push onto their followers. As they approached the girl's ship she waved to the loth-cat as it scampered away and the astromech as they were introduced, smiling warmly from behind her sunglasses as they walked up the ship's ramp.

"We're a bit far from Denon, so heading home isn't really an option given how long that'd take you out of your way, but I think Anobis is probably the best place for me to go."

She paused, considering to herself if she ought to explain why she'd rather be dropped off on some random planet rather than at a bigger trade or travel hub for a quicker way home, but was interrupted by a return to the amusing, if slightly inappropriate, conversation from before. "It's alright, Lio, I believe you." She said with a bit of a chuckle, more of a giggle really. "I learned a lot about Ashin Varanin and her various exploits growing up, I'm sure the stories people dream up of her on the holonet must be wild considering what all she has gotten up to."

"As for why Anobis -- well, I've been trying to live a bit of a more boring life since the Oblivion crisis. Helping people be better and live better lives so they don't end up turning out like the people who've ruined so many lives across the galaxy, but I'm not sure if that's going to be an option anymore, depending on what I learn there."

 

[Liorra]

Lio appreciated when Elle had said she was level-headed or at least that was how she interpreted it. Wordlessly she set opened up her astrogation charts and looked up the coordinates for Anobis. "That's... Ano? Not u, right." Rhetorical as it was Lio switched over to the navigation console and punched in the coordinates. "Oh yeah, well, you could probably say that for any of the big names, Ben Watts, Ember Rekali, Jyoti. Holo's filled with all kinds of stories, comics, fan art."

"They always draw up Thurion with a big ol' hammer, and of course the Noble fandom is like as big as they are," she explained and then looked over her shoulder, "Starlight will come around, they're not used to strangers. Don't let Rek bully you, he can be kinda mean sometimes but he means well."

The teenager listened as the Jedi Master listed off why they were headed to Anobis. "I don't know how that's boring, helping people is never boring. I've never even heard of this world, well, I've probably not heard of a lot outside the major ones." She explained with a nervous smile, whilst smoothly piloting the ship away from the planet.

"Well, there's only so much you can do, right? Can't fix everyone, but so long as we can keep them from the dark. Away from the Sith, or becoming Sith, should be good, yeah?" She asked, the question lingered in the air. Lio thought back to what Mia had said about her black and white view and her brow furrowed. She returned her focus to the navigation console.

Ellie Mors ​