Campaign Retribution | Jedi vs. New Sith | SGHW

[Kahlil Noble]

"Is it?"

The chaos Darth Mori brought to the Force whipped the very air around him. His brow knitted together as what he used to stop her blade now was used to keep himself from being thrown from her blast. The hope in his smile faded slow. The hope that perhaps he could save someone in his family. Show them the Dark they took themselves wasn't the only option. Her choice, be it one made for her or not, wasn't the only path forward now.

"It's easy to be told to stop, but it is the hardest thing you will ever do. I never even made the choice to stop. It took being ripped from the Force to truly see." He took a breath. The ground around him ruptured and shattered, but beneath him the ground stayed calm. The air stayed calm, centered. The eye of the storm, literally instead of just the belief in how he fought.

But, seeing her now. How her skin flaked, the darkness that lingered underneath. What she was now.

The green of his saber sprang to life as he took a step forward. The rippling ground ceased where he stepped, his will unable to stop her from destroying everything around him but at least capable of setting a path forward for himself. The green of his saber brightened for only a moment, then he surged forward. Closed the distance between them to bring his blade down in a single, swift strike.

 

[Vesta]

Rule of Nines​

She could see the pieces align, the movements in the currents of the air, the displacement of the smallest grains of sand under their feet, as the understanding of what needed to be done reached the Jedi's eyes. Like his father before him, Kahlil Noble moved with a purpose that he certainly would have liked to believe was his own or the will of the all pervasive force that his ilk claimed to adhere to. To cut the cord, tear away another corrupted piece of filth that plagued the galaxy, and end her crusade against the rest of her kind before it could even begin - she was defenseless and unarmed, after all, wasn't she? The pillar of verdant green that he held in his hand was blinding to her, how she reeled back as he moved.

It was unlikely that he would have made the attempt he had, to persuade her to give in, if he had been unable to discern that this wasn't the life that she wanted for herself. He came towards her, his body moving slowly in the adrenaline-filled sight that she held him in, and in the briefest of moments she wished she could have been wrong - no, more than that. To be cut down here, now, for a Jedi to prove her wrong by killing a beast before it could rear its ugly head, to do the job she knew the Jedi were unwilling to do until every last option they had was exhausted. If he could kill her here, now, she could rest, sleep forever, and be free from her torment - anyone that could best her could topple the mightiest of giants, if she just let him.

It was in that passing moment that she felt fear, true fear, for the first time. Not of the man that hefted his blade up as he bridged the distance between them with incredible speed, not for the weapon that bore down on her with its loud hum that cut through the air with fragrant disregard for the woman it was heading towards, not even for the death that was lingering so close - a death she craved.

She felt fear of what she was capable of - to give up, to be weak.

Reflexively, as his blade came within atoms of her lifted wrist, a shimmering veil of iridescent light expanded between the two of them to catch his blade. 'No.' She thought, clenching her jaw tighter, her hand curling into a fist. Everything she wanted was right there, just beyond her reach, in the confines of his blade. A sudden release, a quick death, it would be so easy. She grunted in pain as the heat of his lightsaber burned at the flesh at the back of her hand and wrist, tearing away what should have been covering muscle and bone - tore away at what did not. Something lingered there, just beneath the surface, and the glimpses of it earlier that hinted towards it being there was now more than obvious. It was like a shadow, ill-defined, a shape held only where it was contained - where she held herself together.

"It would be so easy for me to stop because there's nothing I'd rather do than make it end."

Like the choice he tried to force upon her, the decision to remain on the defensive would be the easy one to take. There was little risk in holding him at bay, little reward also; but she remembered the words Velok Brokentusk spoke to her of the myriad fates that waited for her, of his advice to rely on the sword that she'd made to deal with Jedi like this - words that she had interpreted differently, given that she had lost the blade before he had informed her of the fortune he had seen. The Faithless was a blade that inspired giving up on the will of some all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful force in favor of the self. It fed on the force in a cheap mimicry of its master, but its use was of little relevance here. Kahlil had tried to appeal to her emotions, to her sense of justice that she clung to so desperately; but in doing so affirmed her of the doubts she had in his ability to do what needed to be done, that anything she wanted done could be made so by any other. The thing she'd told her own apprentice so many times echoed from the back of her mind - the easy choice is never the one worth taking.

Blade against the back of her hand, held back by a thin protection bubble, she let it go.

The bubble faded and she screamed as she chose to disregard the easy way out, to push herself beyond the limits that self-preservation and vanity had bound her with. The flesh that surrounded the shadowy ether burned away as she called upon the same manner of power she had forged her sword with, tutaminis, to become what her sword had been designed to inspire - faithless that anyone else could accomplish what she strove to succeed in, that in death she could find relief, and faithless that there was any hope left in the light side of the force to set things right. Where the darkness underneath was exposed the hunger she had previously controlled was now unbound, a gaping maw that fed on the force, on everything, in the same way another had in ages past. The last shreds of hope inside of her had been eclipsed by the fear that her doubts would be true, by the desperation to accomplish the least of her goals before she could die, and as that last spark of weakness in her was dimmed and then smothered, lost, the undefined shadow that existed where her flesh was destroyed began to take shape.

And its consumption of her physical body began to spread as a explosive telekinetic wave erupted from the center of her being, from a woman that was quickly becoming something that resembled a middle ground between the physical and incorporeal - something that was the hunger which fed on the force incarnate. At the epicenter a shrill scream, distorted like a single voice split in two, reached far and high.

"Stay away from me!"​

 

[Kahlil Noble]

There it was.

The smile was gone. The hope faded to save one of his family's name as her flesh did. She long stopped being human. Mortal. The twisting shadow within, the being of darkness and fear. He flicked his blade back as he felt a warning in the Force. A barrier formed, encasing him, protecting him. Briefly. Then it faded. No, not faded. Devoured. He blinked in surprise before he was thrown back.

A hunger. A void. A wound in the Force so strong it devoured everything. This was the choice she spoke of. The point she couldn't return from. The green of his blade once more burned into existence. Brighter than before. Green turned to white as he lifted his saber.

"I can't."

The Force wept around them. Hurt, devoured. Killed. Both hands gripped his lightsaber as he similarly felt that anguish. Reluctance to kill was the core of his being. There was always another way, another path forward. He took a breath, closed his eyes. There was no saving Darth Mori as she was. The Dark was one with her. So be brought his blade down, once again striking for the Sith before him.

But not to kill. The Light burned in his saber as he cut not to end her life, but separate her from the Dark. Burn it away from what had to linger within. Perhaps it would still would end her life, he couldn't say. But the Jedi trusted in the Force as it guided his blade. He would stop her here, before she devoured the Jedi fighting on this world. And hope the Force would help her survive.

 

[Vesta]

Brittle​

In the primal roar that was her scream, beneath the vibration that carried the piercing wail of her voice and above the rhythm of her heart that pounded like a drum in her chest, she could hear the cracking that she had been trying so hard to keep from spreading. It had always taken all of her strength to hold herself together from the moment she had been torn apart on Rhand, each and every shred and stitch of skin had been tirelessly pieced back together from the dust they had been broken down into. To hold back was to provide herself with the restraint necessary to keep herself from coming apart at the seams, from shattering like a porcelain doll under the weight of all the stress she was constantly pressed down by, but it was what had kept her static - trading a life without limits for an appearance, a shape, that Quinn Varanin could find familiar.

She knew that he meant well enough, understood that Kahlil Noble did what he thought was right, and that, in all actuality, it was he that was the force for good - that she was standing on the wrong side of history, that she'd be remembered as little more than a craven girl that didn't get her way and lost her mind because of it. The problem, as he imbued his blade with the light that he and so many others had struck her down so many times before with, was that this was, at its heart, what had created her in the first place. There was no action that was provided to prevent her from existing in the first place, no proper mitigation or means prepared to stop her from making another like her despite her seemingly willful foray into creating others that thought as she did. She knew what the light side of the force was meant to do, how it was supposed to be spread far and wide to burn away the shadows that would always exist wherever it did not - she wasn't blameless in her decisions, neither were those that had raised her, but the ones who held the highest responsibility in it were the ones who had the power to do something to stop her, or to stop the people that caused her to come about --

And did nothing.

His light may have cut through the all-consuming hunger that tried to gnaw at the world around her, his blade might've shown in stark contrast to the bleak emptiness that bled from her crumbling physical form, but when his lightsaber came crashing down against her it wasn't the darkness in her that was ripped away, it wasn't the hatred in her heart that he exorcised, because she was her darkness, she had consumed it and shouldered the consequences of her choice to embrace it. The thin veil of whatever it was he thought she was, whatever it was he presupposed she could have been, crumbled away as the shadow underneath spread out. Formless, shapeless, cut right in two by his blade without even a degree of resistance. Her consciousness persisted, though, and the darkness that he split in half, the shadowy mass that had escaped from the shattered vessel that crumbled into nothing more than dust while its scream was silenced, came together in the shape of the woman it had left behind.

She was undefined in some ways, lacking much of a face except for the portion of one that was far more put together and focused than the rest, and where her limbs were was static - the blurred lines of what would have been the edge which separated mortal flesh from the air beyond in which, for her, there seemed to be no such border. Her scream hadn't been for her own safety, it hadn't been to preserve some bodily function or out of fear for a death which she had named herself after - it was for the last remaining tie she had to the one single person she had ever cared about, for the vain desire to hold onto a shape that would give her a singular identity that she had been born without. Her unmoving state when he struck through her body with his blade, perhaps hoping to sever her ties from a force with which she was now irretrievably bound to, was the understanding of freedom that she had pursued for so long.

She thought she would have found it in the cold arms of death, in an eternal rest, but instead she found it in letting go of what kept her from becoming everything she hated.

"I told you to stay away." She said, her manifestation somewhat further away from him than the body he had struck down moments before. The physical flesh of a Shi'ido was gone, and with it the confusion she had always had over who she truly was. It didn't matter that she had always lived a life of mimicry, that she had never had a face that was truly her own, an identity that wasn't taken from someone else, because the shade she had been made into was her personality made manifest. "You've taken all that I had left," she said as she concentrated her will into what would become her right hand, green smoke pouring from it as it took shape in order to reveal the sword she had left behind before venturing to this world. From beneath the plumes of a pillar of green was the Faithless in its truest form, conjured as a nightsister might've their own weapons, held aloft in a hand that seemed to be the most well-defined part of her.

"But you've given me so much more."

 

[Kahlil Noble]

Even as he struck down the hollow that was Darth Mori's mortal shell he could tell something was off. The dull color of the world around them hadn't faded. The pain of the Force, consumed by the wound she'd become, hadn't faded. The oppressive darkness, hadn't faded. A chill went down his spine as he stood up, straighter. The Light in his saber dimmed as he again took the blade in both hands.

He didn't turn, not immediately.

"It's startling how similar this is to a friend of mine." Not the wound, but the shade. He turned, his silver eyes narrowed in focus. Slowly. Delaying the fight was just part of him, but it was more than that. Ingrid L'lerim 's truest form was similar enough to what he was looking at now. Enough for him to piece some things together. His feet spread apart as he bent at the knees, lifted his saber to point towards the shadow.

"Despite the darkness she became, she still tries to do right. .. I was wrong, cousin. What you are now I cannot let go, not if you truly won't stop this path." The focused expression broke. A sadness took it's place, a broken smile. His father, her father. They were monsters. He didn't want to admit her to be. He didn't want to be the only one who could walk away. Her choices or not, her path picked free of their families influence, it didn't matter. They were still family.

"Please, don't make me have to kill you. It's not to late to stop."

 

[Darth Kalyptos]

K A L Y P T O S
CHILDREN OF THE VOID
BROTHERHOOD OF THE MAW
HEART OF THE BEAST
Okkeus Dainlei | Ishida Ashina

TWO STEP
ASOG '74
​

Just as the young Knight sought to seize the initiative from the Sithspawn, the Sorcerer seized it back immediately. As pale violet ichor flowed from the wound in his flesh, the mutated Umbaran pressed the assault unfettered, as if the wound and searing pain wrought from it was not an object to impede his pure, unfettered hatred. Spirited men and women who sought to save their Galaxy. Imbued with false virtues and delusional hubris, Kalyptos hated all of them. That they thought themselves so free of sin and corruption, that they deserved to be saved from the final answer of the stars. The impending armageddon that would remake the Galaxy.

The eyes of the Umbaran seared into the gaze of Okkeus with each cut and lunge of his violet saber toward the man- those unmoving pale eyes never breaking from the Jedi's own, as if appraising each action, each reaction to the Umbaran's assault before eventually he sought to cut his blade toward the Jedi's in the hopes of swiping it away from his body, leaving his guard open in swift reposte before his other hand, pale and strung with violet veins and harsh black nails would bring itself up in a clawing motion, holding it out toward him as he sought to sap the Jedi's life force from him with a parasitic drain through the darkness of the force that was imbued into his very flesh and bone.

Another hydraulic swipe of steel closed in further toward Ashina before veering in the direction of the Battlemind who immediately slammed a hand unto the industrial weapon and in the direction of another Khot Vong swiping it toward his arm, biting down with bonebreaking force and pressing through the exoskeleton, flesh and bone before the jaws unclamped. The cracking bone and slick spewing of flesh and sinew sounded out in a gruesome symphony as violet gore and crimson washed down the heavy blades.


But they persisted. The Battlemind's attention shifted in her direction as he pounced between the Khot Vong, a gnashing digit pointed toward the shadowy figure before a bark of a command in Vong accompanied his indicator.

The Atrisian was swift in her evasion, but even still- she was in their domain. She slipped past the initial group only to find herself in the throes of the next advance, the E-WEB team stopping in its tracks and beginning to set up the weapon upon her approach as they spoke to one another in hushed, guttural tones of the Vong language before eventually taking aim down the weapon and spitting a horrific hail of blaster bolts down the tunnels. The blackness illuminated in streaks of crimson with the light echo of each trace being used to hone in on her swift movement.

All the while, the Battlemind was in her shadow, the vibro axe humming in mechanical hatred as he sought her down.

​

​

[/QUOTE]

 

[Vesta]

Try.

That was what they always did, wasn't it? Try to be better, try to succeed, try, try, try. She could feel the blurred edges of her shadowy form gain greater definition the more she heard him speak, the more she digested the words he spoke. Like her father, like his, and every other person in the galaxy that tried to do something and never saw it through to the end, he was threatening her with something she knew he couldn't do. So remarkably indecisive, so flexible, to bend at every ray of light and shudder at every shadow, there wasn't an ounce of self-awareness in the sorts of people that he had set himself out to be. She wasn't aware of Ingrid L'lerim in the same sense that he was, the last she had even heard from the woman had been when Vesta had invented the mark of Typhojem to bind others to her will and discussed it in her presence, but she knew that anyone who referred to something as an attempt, to say that one tried, also meant that they failed.

That was something she would not accept.

"You are standing in the way of progress. I told your father I wouldn't hunt you and your siblings, or the rest of our family down, as long as I could help it - you say you'll kill me but I have been dead inside for far too long for that to matter to me." She said, the vibrations of her voice in the air becoming clearer with each successive syllable uttered. The blade in her hand was one which shared her lack of regard for the light side of the force, designed with the sole purpose of dealing with the arrows that Allyson Locke had shattered her previous weapon with, and if she meant what she had been implying then whatever restraint she might have been presenting him with before was certainly not going to last any longer.

"I am going to erase the blight of the Sith'ari from the stars, and kill the rest of the so-called Dark Lords of the Sith before I leave this wretched existence."

She tilted her blade to the side, marveling as she spoke at the strange nature of her new form. Her gaze moved towards Kahlil Noble with a vaguely curious expression etched into the face that achieved a visual presence, where the rest of her body remained vague, with eyes that were merely sunken sockets that exposed the shadowy cloud beneath the façade which was her face. "I don't care that you are only now learning your lesson in letting people like me go, but this is one such situation in which you have no choice." She took a step towards him, or at least as close to a step as the mist-like lower half of her body could appear to take, and the conscious effort of doing so seemed to give physical limits to her shadowy limbs to create at least a border now between where her body ended and the air around her began. "You will face the same result in trying to kill me as you would facing Darth Solipsis ."

"Be glad I am the more merciful out of the two of us - and leave before you make things worse."

She shrugged.

"Or stay here and be buried by the very monster you tried to tear out of me."

 

[Kahlil Noble]

Well that was a surprise. Given how his father had culled numerous of his siblings, Kahlil figured he was as open season as them. To think that Darth Mori had made such a promise was.. Weird? Yeah, weird. Did his father even care? Unlikely. In a way, it just showed that, somewhere, she wasn't so far gone as she thought. Or at least wasn't at the time. What would've happened if he searched for her then?

No, he didn't know.

But what she said? The Jedi let out a breath, closing his eyes. Listening to the Force. It wept in anguish for what Vesta had become. The pain she brought to it, to others.

"If your only targets were the Sith like Solipsis, I would step out of your way." His eyes opened, narrowed again in concentration. Focus.

"But you've become something that kills those around you by just existing. I'll take your lesson to heart cousin, and I'll teach you something in return." His body tensed. Poised to strike. Whatever her blade was, he figured it would do something to the Light. How many Sith went out of their way to try and block it? Even he had done something similar when he was part of the order. That was his advantage over most other Jedi.

He knew what it was to be Sith.

"Jedi might be reluctant to kill and you may hate them for it. But they will give up their lives if it means stopping something like you." Then he moved. The Force was his ally as it always was, even in this void. He closed the distance, the Light again filling his saber as he struck out. Even if it didn't work, whatever she had that damped it would only dampen it for so long.

Or so he hoped. If it didn't run out, then Mori had found something truly horrible.

 

[Darth Solipsis]

DARK LORD OF THE SITH | VOICE OF THE MAW
Zark San Tekka

​

The Dark Lord had been severed from his watchful gaze of his student’s battle, a voice, a slither of putrid light came to invasive of his umbral casting. That malevolent shadow that stretched on across the galaxy from his still form.

"Hello, Kaigann."

A manifestation of the Force, apparition made manifest from the projected self. A powerful technique that was dangerous in the hands of the untrained and even so to the masters that wielded the Force. He had his suspicion immediately, recognizing the sudden presence emerge from nothingness in such a way as he had to Darth Carnifex on Rhand.

"This is your vision for the galaxy?" he shook his head, "Not impressed."

His very presence was an anchor of light, a bastion of hope for the others to cling to. He would seek to undo the very damage that the miasma of the Dark Side would inflict upon the vulnerable minds of those within. He interrupted the deep seated tendrils ensnared into the minds of those he would bolster with his own dark presence. Their energies clashed, the Dark Lord summoned his full attention upon the emergent Jedi Master and faced him as the bright white crossguard flickered to life with a snap-hiss.

"Even a Jedi's mercy has limits."

“That name is as meaningless as your taunts. Do you presume to grant me mercy Jedi?”

He stepped forward, closer.

“Taking me once more before your senate, your council.. your circle.”

Closer.

“After all I have done, all I will do.”

His right hand snapped forward bringing with it his old yorik coral hilt. With a roar, the crimson blade sprang to life as the Dark Voice entered a Djem So stance of his own.

“Heroic.”

The Sith’ari poured his hatred, his frustration, and unbridled rage into the empyrean stream. Guided by his metaphysical tether, by the unholy spirit that cast it’s psyche into the void. The Dark Lord of the Sith sought to attempt something he had never before, a try of the utmost finesse. Opportunity rang and he would answer, not as a slave to Fate but as it’s master. The Epochian sought purchase in latching onto the metaphysical link between physical and immaterial. The bond between man and spiritual projection, he sought to exploit this link between time and space with his own projection hoping for a parallel.

If they could sync up, if they could cast themselves as one.. could they strike another? Could they truly fight across the distance as one could only in the mythos of old tongue? He could not say, but he would try.

“I’ll make sure we finish the job after they cage you again.”

 

[Erion Justeene]

Objective: Fight a Jedi or two.
Location: Mining Facility, Asog
Equipment: Lightsaber, Voidsaber
Allies: BOTM | NSO
Enemies: Jedi
Tag: Leon Gallo

Superious watched the Jedi squirm as the lightning hit each time. But even though he did get the lightsider exactly where he wanted him, his wrist twinged as a reminder that he would do well not to be cocky and let his guard down. That got his wrist shattered and he then got burnt, he was lucky not to lose his hand or get his head twisted.

The lightning ceased as the Ubese Sith readied for a killing blow, the sharp snap-hiss of his lightsaber seemed loud even in the tumult of Chaos. Like a predator Superious watched as the soul before him kneeled, he couldn't bring the Jedi down and flattened.

No matter he can always rectify this through the blade of plasma. So he stalked forward, singing the ground with his Saber, cutting grooves into the ground, the orange-red glow throwing jagged shadows across the trampled earth. He should be on alert for any enemy forces that want to take a pop at him, there are plenty who do want to fight Sith at any cost.

His objective was derailed by another Jedi who fought him to a standstill, causing the offensive to become defensive. Each one blocking and parrying, making sure that neither had an advantage over the other. Superious, not one to continue a distracting one-sided fight, so, used the force to throw the youngster against a stone edifice with enough force to crack the rock. Since he was in a vindictive mood he decided to smash the helpless have a go hero against the rock several times, not stopping until the stone was slick with blood. Once it was certain that he wasn't going to be distracted he walked towards Leon, intent on finishing the man off.

Visor glowing orange-red, Superious lifted his Saber high, aiming for Leon's head.

 

[Vesta]

Seize the Power​

"I am not asking for your permission, Kahlil Noble ."

She tilted her blade towards the ground as he chose to continue this pointless charade of negotiations with ceaseless posturing. It wasn't in her nature to entertain people with these lengthy arguments, the likes of the Fel emperor and the disgraced Sith emperor had met her blade first and spoke little with her, only whenever it was most convenient to her, but she'd had to fill the void of time between his arrival and her fulfillment of the promise she made to his father before any sort of violence could begin. Despite whatever assumptions the man had of her, the only reason she had let this nonsense continue for as long as it had was because of the inverse of the threat she had made to the man's father: that she would kill every last member of the Zambrano line if Darth Carnifex intervened in her affairs within the core.

"Just stating the consequences of your actions."

Her eyes, or whatever one might call the empty void from where she could see, narrowed at the mention of her learning something else. The very notion of turning this into a lesson of sorts was far beyond the realm of possibility for either of them. Neither he nor she were willing to be swayed over to the other's side and he was just as unwilling to step aside as she was to roll over and die. Indeed his revelation, as she would eventually come to see his introspective reveal to be, was one which invalidated the last reservations she had about going forward with the plan she had concocted in her head nearly a year past. The idea that she would be sacrificing so many trillions of people to recreate a galaxy without the people that had shaped her own life in such a twisted way had always weighed heavily on her - but to know that the line which the Jedi held themselves to was in stopping a change to the status quo, that this cycle was worth keeping, informed her of a very different reality.

One which she had misunderstood.

Her blade arced up unopposed by anything except the man's lightsaber, the light within drained into her own without even an ounce of discretion from either it or its master. Kahlil had more than made clear his willing disregard for the implied promise she had made to his father, that she would leave him and the rest of his ilk unharmed as long as Carnifex kept his side of the bargain, and so gone were the restraints she had kept on herself or the very minor choices in behavior that would've otherwise changed the outcome of how things went very dramatically much earlier on. For instance she didn't make wasteful attacks at the area surrounding her relative, nor did she pointlessly consume the force around her in order to posture menacingly - she didn't need to. The blade rotated horizontally in her hand, placing the man's lightsaber against the flat of her blade, and was drawn backwards as she lifted her spare hand to push against it with a telekinetic nudge - only to thrust it towards the man's chest as she lowered it.

"Unfortunate, for you."

 

[Leon Gallo]

The expected blow never came. A Jedi Leon had never seen before came between himself and death. Even as Leon forced himself to get up, he watched the fight. Pain wracked his body, his nerves initially refusing to respond. Then the Jedi fell. It was not a quick, merciful strike of the blade. With each blow of the rock, Leon's blood boiled. Anger welled in his heart. Rage, pure rage built in his mind. He could feel his comrade's pain, even well after the young Jedi died.


With a yell, Leon was again on his feet. Drawing from that anger, that hatred of the Sith in front of him, he channeled energy into himself. Sabre high, Leon charged again, meeting his foe. He struck quickly, seeking any opening, pressing the attack with even more speed than he had earlier. This wasn't a fight about vague ideas of light and dark any more. Leon wanted blood.


Erion Justeene

 

[Ishida Ashina]

THE WHISPER OF A WEAPON

LIGHT TRAVELS FASTER THAN ANYTHING
OBJECTIVE TWO | HEART OF THE BEAST | STRIKE TEAM SKYWALKER
LIGHT THINKS IT TRAVELS FASTER THAN ANYTHING
BUT IT IS WRONG
NO MATTER HOW FAST LIGHT TRAVELS,
IT FINDS DARKNESS HAS ALWAYS GOT THERE FIRST.
AND IS WAITING FOR IT.

RE-WILD
​

Ishida's luck ran out when the power generator of the emplacement weapon fired up. Violent ruby ripped through the tunnel in brilliant flashes. Scorches of superheated, super-strong salvo burned against exoskeletons and shattered stone with inanimate indifference.

Shots from the mount's mouth cored through her right hip and below her left rib one after the other. They slipped through the defensive whirr of her blade.

White-hot pain pulsed out from the burning hole in her flesh, and she dropped to the dirt. Her teeth clenched, grinding together to bite through the pain that pulsed. Urgency flared, and a shimmering blue dome surrounded her.

But the barrage did not stop. Fissures quickly grew along the flickering barrier, spiderwebbing out until it eventually cracked and shattered. Ishida was forced to constrain herself to a more intimate position amidst the crowd being cut down by the E-Web's salvo. And perhaps hide longer from the vibro-axe on her heels. Seconds were precious.

Hhng. Ishida groaned through heaving lungs, air pushed in and from them in guttural whooshes. She planted her foot and twisted to right herself from a tabletop position, and crawled desperately against the curve of the cave. Ridges of stone pushed against her back, and a more minor barrier to cover her person glistened ahead of her.

A trill of mortal panic travelled through her, feeding on the pain in the two bloodied holes on her person. Her breaths were shallow while seeking a way to survive.

Her strengths were in close combat. Intimate encounters where blade met blade, eyes saw eyes. There was no elegance, no honour, in the weapon that seared through the tunnels. The deluge of plasma was one thing she could perhaps focus on that enough to defend herself — that was not unlike a lesson her brother had forced her through on Hebo.

Inosuke Ashina placed her at the base of a tree and instructed her not to allow any leaves to touch the grass. The foliage had fallen slowly at first, one at a time — then a wind had swept up the tree. It had been strenuous, but she'd managed to keep the leaves suspended.

"I've done it." Ishida boasted, proudly surrounded by bunches of floating greenery. None touched the ground. ​

​

Inosuke's expression remained impassive. He gestured beyond and pointed to the roots of an adjacent black pine. Several fresh needles lay at its base in the grass. ​

​

"Preoccupied with just one leaf, you'll miss the tree. Concerned with only one tree, you won't see the forest." ​

She'd failed that lesson because she'd been too focused to see beyond the immediate threat to the broader picture and adapt to the changing needs.

Not unlike now, Ishida realized. Just the tree and its falling leaves. Like the mount and the plasma. Like the hum of the superweapon she had to get to first to destroy —

—No! Even just focusing on her objective to destroy the superweapon was myopic and static— there was more than that. The entirety of the Vong that collected here, the leader and his men and all they represented.

"I have to see the forest." The words stung her mouth.

It was larger than her and larger than Knight Dainlei. The understanding muscled through the miasma of fear.

What if, instead of getting to the weapon first, she reversed her tactic? And made it so nobody was able to get closer? Adapted her method of survival even further?

If she wanted to survive and prevent the weapon's use, she'd have to use her environment — the tunnel — as an augmentation of self. She'd already understood the dangers of the Kohl Vong; her connection with The Force would impose little impact on them. And their communication network was so efficient that any more distance she might try to achieve would quickly be stopped.

One hand pressed against where the cave's wall met the ground. The tunnel itself lit up, line and fissures, cracks and impossibly solid sections all hummed their connection to The Force. The lines matched what had led her here, with some significant differences Shatterpoint could exploit.

One — the only other beacon of light nearby, Okkeus, was waning. Darkness was overwhelming here, and Ishida felt her throat tighten and dry. Her command for him to Run! was as hoarse as it was urgent. The wound below her lungs oozed extra blood from the exertion to scream out her warning.

Two — the durability of the cave was being undermined. Where the weapon had whispered her to come hither, it was shaking. Crumbling. Collapsing. The Force spread through the rocks, crunching them to dust by the hands of another. Anger and darkness burgeoned within the air and rumbled through the shared walls.

Her breath was ragged behind her respirator, and her eyes screwed tightly shut. Her fingertips gripped at the slope where dirt met stone. The world blurred around her, the inhumane sounds of gnashing metal and ugly cries became distant and sharp somehow at the same time.
Bit by bit, the crags were coaxed to yawn wider and wider. Silt dribbled from the overhanging darkness in sections. The weakest points groaned louder than the others and fell first.

In the tunnel where Ishida was, one giant chunk collapsed several meters away from her and clapped against the ground.

Glowing brightly through The Force's network in her mind's eye, the weaknesses of the tunnel pulsed in a pathway that would fall in succession. She wished she could influence the defects further and master how everything fell apart. If only she could force the entire cave to collapse all at once, or at least be more strategic about exploiting the weaknesses sooner so the strengthened areas would lose their fortification, but the pain from her mortal wounds pulsed as angry distractions.

White-knuckled against the stone, begging the bedrock to bend, Ishida was nigh breathless. Those that dared to unearth the weapon were destined to be buried with it, and if she couldn't beat them, she might join them.

---

NJO | SKYWALKERS/GROUNDCRAWLERS | Okkeus Dainlei

| Zaka | Iris Arani | Kai Bamarri | Silas Mantis| Jorah zos Darnus
BROTHERHOOD OF THE MAW | Darth Kalyptos | Dimitri Voltura | Darth Ptolemis | Thalia Senn | Darth Vow

 

[Erion Justeene]

Objective: Now this is a worthy fight.
Location: Mining Facility, Asog
Equipment: Lightsaber, Voidsaber
Allies: BOTM | NSO
Enemies: Jedi
Tag: Leon Gallo

The fight had been going in his favour, he was on the upper hand, except now he wasn't ahead any longer. Leon was no pushover, so now Superious was now defensive and pulled into another conflict as the duelling all around them spun out of control. The force screamed with emotion and violence, the air felt like it was going to ignite with the pressing presence of the Force.

A double team of Jedis means another side distraction, no matter he'll get back to his primary target but as for now, he got caught in a snarl of more green/blue blades. He fought as many as he could at that moment, killing a quarter and force jumping away when he was starting to become overwhelmed.

He had little time to react as a very angry Leon took his attention away and he was again engaged in an intense fight, the back and forth was intense and Superious refused to give way to the angry attack. He had a mean streak that he was not afraid to use to goad his enemies into irrationality and he can then overpower them as he added to their instability.

<"He was foolish to be a have a go hero. His master failed to teach him properly."> Superious taunted, wanting to push as many buttons as he could. Even if he was now on the defensive. This can now go either way.

 

[Kahlil Noble]

He didn't respond any longer. No more words, no more trying to reason with Darth Mori to try and sway his family from this dark path. His saber clashed into her blade, and he felt something he didn't expect. Sith Runes, there had been several he'd learned how to make himself to resist the light. Resist. A shield with a limited battery, enough to survive the initial clash against a Light wielding Jedi.

But what she had didn't resist. It drained. Consumed. Confusion filled his gaze as he watched the light of his blade seep into the sword it pressed against. Not just his blade. Himself? He gritted his teeth, quickly jumping back. The unknown effect, what it meant, what it would do. Instinct had him retreat. Only to be blasted farther back by a nudge in the force. He crossed his arms over his chest, willing the Force to protect him.

It did, if barely.

Something was wrong in the Force. His choice to talk, to delay. Ironic, wasn't it? He forced a smile as he lifted his blade once he landed. This was bad.