Ask Having a Crait Time

[Juniper]

Nara felt her teeth grind together as the sabers met, her attack forced away from it's intended arc, missing her. The girl had some training with a saber, but her movements were all too quick. She felt the cold swell in her stomach, the twist in her guts at the presence of the dark side. The girl was calling on it.

As the Sith girl jumped, Nara would not simply watch. As she flipped, Nara pulled her free hand back and shoved forwards with the Force, sending a powerful blast towards the Sith, attempting to knock her off-balance. If the Sith girl kept coming, then Nara would meet her blade with a diagonal guard of her own, twisting her sword arm to the side of her arc, meeting the red blade with a little force behind herself. Glaring at her through the clash of blue and red, the fizz of the sabers as their magnetic locks snapped close.

"I hear the light burns your kind, Sith," she told her, practically spitting the words.

@Casmer

 

[Dhari Rast]

The Jedi's push knocked Dhari off balance as she sprinted towards her. It made the Mirialan's feigned attack less believable, and she also wasn't centered well when she swiveled and attempted the cut. The Jedi met Dhari's blade with her own, locking her blade against Dhari's, so easily, so securely that it tore a hole in the confidence the Dark Side imbued Dhari with. Dhari could harness the Force and expel it violently, but neither as focused nor as efficiently as the Jedi. She could swing her lightsaber and use it effectively, but not as deftly as the Jedi. Although their altercation had lasted mere seconds, Dhari knew already that the Jedi was the better fighter. Still, she had no intention of giving up, even though the rational part of her screamed for her to yield.

"I am no Sith!" Dhari would scream, attempting to shove the Jedi away with her blade, ending the blade lock. If she succeeded, she would immediately bend the Force to her will and follow up with a Force-assisted blast of her own, hoping to knock the Jedi back for long enough that she might think of a way to beat her. Regardless of what happened, she would say through gritted teeth: "How typical of a Jedi to jump to conclusions."

@Charndley

 

[Juniper]

Nara was not a master of battle. She wasn't a duelist of great renown. She wasn't particularly great at being a warrior of the Light like some she knew. Despite all that, she was trained. She could fight. And she could tell that this Sith girl, whatever she called herself, was not an equal.

When the girl shoved the blades, they parted and ended the lock. Nara felt the tug of the Force and crossed her arms, feeling the blast of energy hit her. She skidded back on her boots, creating some distance, though it was not enough to fully knock her down. It was time to get serious. It took half a second to notice the nearest metal container. With a squeeze of her palm and a quick, violent drag across herself, Nara shoved the crate in the air and threw it brutally towards the girl. It was fast but hastily targeted, intending to smack and wound.

"Getting tired yet, little Sith?" she yelled out, the smirk clear in face and voice.

@Casmer

 

[Dhari Rast]

Dhari had hoped that her Force blast would give her some time, but the Jedi stood firm and barely gave ground. In retaliation, she sent a metal container hurtling towards Dhari. The Mirialan only had a moment to react, instinct guiding her movements as she lunged sideways, rolling out of the container's path just as it passed by. She came out of the roll in a crouched position, her leading left foot acting as a brake, sliding on the ground for a meter or so before coming to a stop. Her left hand supported her weight on the ground. Her right arm held out sideways, the crimson blade in her hand humming ominously as she looked up at the Jedi.

Hatred contorted her face. Anger turning her eyes into smoldering embers. She wanted to hurt the Jedi. Wanted to tower above her, seeing her writhe in pain underneath her boot. It wouldn't be murder. It would be justice. Justice for the people both Jedi and Sith had robbed from her. For the agony they had caused. For the faces - cruel, horrific - that were her bedfellows at night. They were a disease that only the slash of her crimson blade could cure.

Amidst all of that, she heard laughter. Remembered laughter. And not just any laughter, but one familiar, one very dear to her, even it she hadn't heard it in years. It echoed silently somewhere between the walls of anger in her mind, slapping at the fire within her like wind causing a candle to flicker. But it created enough of an opening for Dhari. A crease in a rockface, showing the way to the top.

She breathed.

"I'm not a Sith."

The crimson blade extinguished. Dhari stood.

"And now that I think about it, you don't seem much like a Jedi, Jedi. There's too much pride in you." Dhari smirked. "If anything, you're more like me."

@Charndley

 

[Juniper]

Nara held her ground, watching as the other woman extinguished her blade. Wary for the typical betrayals. Inside, she wanted to lunge. End it. End it now, while she's being stupid. One less Sith in the Galaxy can only be a good thing, right?

Right?

Nara watched and then sighed, extinguishing her own saber. Darkness rushed in to meet them.

"I'm not taking lessons on the Jedi from a Sith girl in a shitty jacket," Nara fired back, still holding her hilt in her hand, just in case. "There's more to being a Jedi than sitting around in robes, contemplating the Galaxy. Some of us remember what we're meant to do."

The air hang between them, heavy with hidden meaning.

"So are you going to keep getting in my way? It's just that I've got a lot to do. Places to go, people to see."

@Casmer

 

[Dhari Rast]

Dhari merely shrugged at the woman's words. "I'm not much of a teacher, and if I were I wouldn't be giving out my nuggets of gold for free. And I'm not much into fashion either, though I can see why you'd go for a stab in that direction. There are some terribly vain individuals among the Sith." The Mirialan attached the hilt of her lightsaber to the magnetic lock on her utility belt. It was clear from the way the woman phrased it that Dhari had been spot on. "So, a non-Sith and a non-Jedi - at least according to the Orders, I assume - face off on a piece of shit planet in the middle of nowhere. If you didn't believe the shit state that the Galaxy is in, this would be all the proof you'd need, eh?"

She moved towards the woman, slowly and wary of any sign that the woman was taking it as an attack. "Listen, I know that whatever you've found in that control room must be worth more than the arms out here. Otherwise, why not just kill me and claim them for yourself?" She grinned. "I could continue to oppose you, but we both know how that would end. However, I would delay you significantly, I promise you that. So how about this: I didn't see any other ship than my own waiting outside. Not hard to deduce that you might need a lift off the planet. So, whatever it is that is so valuable, you cut me in on it, any I fly you out of here and deliver you to wherever you have to go? Doesn't have to be a 50-50 cut. And we can share the guns too, if you'd like." She would halt her steps, and her face contorted in a mask of worry. "Look, I need this - whatever this is."

@Charndley

 

[Juniper]

Nara didn't put her saber back at the same time as her, just in case. It'd be silly to give up an advantage, especially when this could turn oh so quickly.

"How do you think I got onto this planet? Jedi magic?" she fired back, looking at Shari a little more. "There's nothing to cut you in on. I'm after locations to old Jedi outposts and rumours, back from a hundred-odd years ago. There's nothing there but ruins, wrecks and maybe a rotting book of meditation." What did she expect? Vast halls filled with jewels? "What I want will need the wisdom of an experienced Force user, one who's particularly close with the light. And you..." she said, looking Dhari up and down, "...are not that."

She looked around the rest of the cavern. "I don't want any guns, didn't we just say this? They're all yours. Load your ship up. Fill your boots. Eat your fill. I'll give you the name of a good fence on Nar Shaddaa, if he hasn't turned into creature food by now."

"Where I'm going, there's no credits. Probably just bullshit."

@Casmer

 

[Dhari Rast]

Dhari tasted the woman's words, unable to detect even a note of dishonesty. How disappointing. She had hoped that her defensiveness was a sign that she had something of value to steer Dhari's focus away from. Something that could have pulled Dhari out of the mess she was in - even it it had required a bit of manipulation or coercion to get the woman to share it. But old Jedi ruins? Unlike to be worth her time.

Dhari shook her head. "No," she said, "I'm not. But I'm not this Dark Side monster that you so clearly want me to be either." The painful presence at her core seemed to growl at that, unhappy, angry. But the urge was, at least for now, small enough that she could suppress it.

She shrugged. "I'll take the guns, for what they're worth. But don't bother with the fence. There are other places to off-hand merchandise that are not filled to the brim with walking decrepitude - yet." She spun, letting the woman do her thing, and got back to her work with preparing the crates for the loading procedure. However, a question was gnawing at Dhari's mind. And before the woman would have a chance to leave, Dhari would turn and say: "How do you do it?"

If the woman decided to answer, Dhari would elaborate: "Your emotions. Hold them and stay in the Light?" The woman would have no reason to even want to explain - Dhari recognized that. But there was something different about the woman, something that made Dhari ask a question she had devised in her brain a thousand times but never had anyone even remotely relevant to ask it to. And the woman would be able to hear something in the tone of Dhari's voice, an emotion so unorthodox to someone who had once been a Sith.

Vulnerability.

@Charndley

 

[Juniper]

"Fine. Whatever. Enjoy your antiques," Nara snarked, watching the other woman head to her ill-gotten gains. It didn't really matter to her. Hopefully she'd make a decent payday and find a better life than digging through long-lost bases on salty backwaters.

The question came out of left-field, though. She was just about heading through the door when she heard it. Lingering there, thinking through an answer. Really, she shoulda just walked right on out of there and forgotten about the woman. Left her to pilfer and steal and sell. But it hit some old wounds, buried deep and scabbed over from years and years ago. A long forgotten part of her brain whispered to her.

Emotion, yet peace.

"You'd be surprised how much that has come up," she said quietly, thinking about old masters, shouting matches and crying in front of the assembled Jedi Order. Bad memories. "How do I stay in the Light? I don't think there's an answer beyond not being an evil dick. Sorry, it's not particularly detailed but there it is."

She gazed over her shoulder at the other woman, giving her a soft, curious look. "I grew up in a shitty place with no family. You go through that as a kid, you can either get all bitter, vow revenge, take it out on everyone else... or you do what you can to stop others going through it. I wish there was more to it than trying to be a decent person... because that's the really hard shit."

Nara shrugged at Dhari. "There ends the big secret of the Light."

@Casmer

 

[Dhari Rast]

Dhari felt bad for the woman. Her words carried trauma that superceded the few details she let on about her past. It made Dhari feel ashamed of her own happy childhood memories. Her shit had started only recently by comparison. And yeah, while it did involve being coerced into murdering people and a myriad of other pains to both the body and the soul, at least she had a time before, a dividing line between her problems and the happy memories that pulled her out of them when she had gone too far down the path of the Dark SIde.

"No ordinary Jedi," Dhari mumbled wistfully. Then, louder, she said: "Thank you. You didn't have to stay and answer. But you did. And you-" the knot in her core growled pridefully, but she fought it down "- would have killed me if we'd kept going, but you didn't." Her eyes found the woman's. "I backed down. Where I'm from, you pay for that with your life. And you had every reason to press the advantage. Instead, you chose peace."

Just do the decent thing. It sounded too easy. Like those weight loss stim commercials she had seen on the Holonet. But, as she stood there, facing the Jedi, she realized that it might in fact be the hardest course of action. "Listen," she said, and paused. Because she knew the right thing to do was to make amends for the way she had acted towards the woman. Dhari doubted that the woman would care - she had made it perfectly clear that she didn't mind what Dhari did from here on out, as long as it steered clear of her. Even so, the decent thing was to offer reparations. And it took much more willpower than Dhari had expected to do so.

She sighed. "I've got my ship parked outside. It's not pretty, but we should be able to get you to where you need to go." She would raise her hands preemtively, in case the woman wanted to object. "I don't want anything in return. These guns should make this trip cost neutral, and there are plenty of other scrapyards to salvage from after I've delivered you to your destination." Her body seemed to lose its posture for a moment, arms crossed, fingers picking at the skin of her forearms. "I've had a lot of shit happen in my life lately. I just want to do the right thing - just this once."

@Charndley

 

[Juniper]

"You're right. I probably would've killed you."

No false modesty there. The fact that she didn't really try to kill people very often wasn't necessary to elaborate on. They'd established that neither of them were what they once were... and although that didn't erase all the suspicion in Nara's mind, it was enough to make her agree. For now.

"Fine. Sounds good to me. I shouldn't need to go too far anyway. There's a lot of data I need to parse through to find what I'm looking for. Probably going to have to make several stops." The records of the Resistance would have several suspected hideouts for the Jedi Orders of old. If they still had Rebel Alliance data, there could be hundreds of worlds there. Didn't exactly seem like she was narrowing her leads but hey, a hundred worlds down from countless was some sort of start.

"I guess this does count as doing the right thing. Just this once." With that, Nara smirked at Dhari and looked towards some crates. Furrowing her brow, she concentrated and raised her hand, as the heavy crate lifted up through the Force. "Well, seeing as I'm hitching a ride, let me help you clean up my mess." She guided the crate towards the hole in the bulkhead, out towards the scattered salt plains and presumably her ship.

"Might take a while though!"

@Casmer

 

[Dhari Rast]

Dhari nodded a thanks to the woman. Transporting the weapons caches via the use of the Force was arguably a much faster and less annoying ordeal than use the repulsorlift, but Dhari couldn't allow herself that luxury. The fight with the woman had clearly shown how easily she slipped down into the pit that hid inside of her. With the woman's help, they could be off-planet in no time at all.

"I've got nothing but time on my hands," Dhari said. Several stops. Kriff. She operated the repulsorlift into position to snatch up a crate and move it outside the cavern and towards the Blacklight. A pang of resentment soured her belly. But she shook it off, reminding herself of the woman's words about the Light and how to get there. "I'm not above helping others," she muttered to herself. Even if it encompassed a little more than she had initially expected.

Following the woman to the freighter, the Mirialan unlocked the ship and lowered the cargo ramp. "Just put it wherever you can find a spot," she said. Shouldn't be too hard. There was hardly any cargo in the hold at all. "I'll bring the rest of the crates out here with the repulsor. You lift them into the hold. We'll be out of here soon enough." Dhari turned and began the walk back to the cavern, stopped, and about-faced. "I'm Dhari, by the way," she told the woman. Then, she continued towards the cavern and the crates still waiting to be transported out of there.

/exitthread

@Charndley