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Tython
Jedi Temple
1345 Hours
[skip down a bit to get to the meat and potatoes. open to jedi. pm me with questions. thanks!]
"Memento mori, Master Delun. Memento mori."
Delun's ears flattened to his skull as his AI spoke. Memento mori - 'You will die', or 'Remember your mortality', depending upon how you took it. A harsh, but necessary, reminder of Delun's vulnerability. Of the weakness of blood and flesh, and the terrible strength of fire and steel.
He sighed quietly, ran his gauntlet-clad paws over the top of his head. "I know, Dex."
"Oh really? Ordinarily I'd make a witty remark about your stereotypical feline curiosity, but as you seem genuinely determined to commit suicide by Jedi horde, I'm actually worried for once. Pray tell, master; why a trip to Tython? Why now? You don't need me to remind you that you just got done blowing a hole in the sodding temple walls!"
"You know why." The answer was unusually cryptic for Delun, perhaps even out of character! He typically went to great lengths to explain his reasoning. Dex picked up on the inconsistency almost instantly.
"No, I do not," the AI complained, "This has something to do with that Fuyu business, doesn't it? You've been obsessed with the Battlemaster ever since you were last here. Records pulled, data analyzed; you've searched for next of kin, for homeworld, and for what? Because a dinky Alliance computer mistook you for him?"
"It was a genetic scanner, Dex. A seventy percent match. Siblings. I know it. I feel it. His death - when he died, the day he died, I had nightmares. There's a connection there, I know it. I know it! And I need to know why. I need answers, Dex. I need answers, and the Jedi have them. One way or another, I'll get them."
"Even if it kills you?"
Delun paused. "Yes," he replied, hesitantly. "Because I don't know who I am. Delun is just a name - I've been clinging to it because I have nothing else to cling to. It's who I am now, but not who I was. The person I used to be, the person who knew Daisuke... That's who I want to know. I want to find myself. I need to find myself. And this is the closest I've ever been to getting answers. It's an oppurtunity, Dex. A valuable one. I may never get this sort of chance again - I'd be an idiot to pass it up. It's worth the risk. It's worth any risk."
"A hollow life is a life not worth living," Dex murmured thoughtfully. "I, too, would not wish to lose my memory, though as an AI I'm incapable of understanding the psychological implications it must have for you. Now that I know your reasoning, you have my support. You could have taken it anyways, but... You have it, and that's that, Delun."
The feline finished suiting up in Exodus - a suit of power armor, which he had built himself. "Thanks."
"You can thank me by returning to me alive. I'd be grateful if I didn't have to find another new owner, and don't you dare think of giving me to that madman, Christian Noble! I might have to fly straight into a sun if he ends up in possession of me!"
The remark brightened Delun's mood, if only by a small degree. He chuckled softly and shook his head. "I'll do what I can, Dex," he replied with a soft purr. The feline pulled his helmet on and sealed it to the armored collar of his battledress, then brought all systems online and ran a quick check.
For this particular venture, Delun had chosen to shed his shoulder weapons; bringing them screamed violence and aggression, and would send the wrong message entirely. Instead, he fitted Exodus out for defensive work; forearm gun pods only, no shoulder weapons, and backup heat sinks to allow him to push his suit's mobility systems to their outermost limit. He did place a cargo pod, identical to his forearm weapons pods, on his left shoulder; about the size of a small briefcase, with a change of clothes, some basic tools, and his datapad. On the right shoulder, a second pod held spare heat sinks and additional tools, along with his favorite pair of shoes and mechanic's gloves.
His left forearm pod contained no weapons, and instead held an extra power supply, a highly experimental omniforge system which had been created with no small amount of help, and magseal field generators to bolster his suit's defensive shield grid. It would allow him to project an immensely powerful 'tower shield' with his left arm, or to condense the shield down to a narrow strip and funnel drive plasma into it to create a cutting blade similar in effect to a lightsaber; that shield pod would give his suit the defensive abilities it'd need to spar with a lightsaber.
Applique armor, in the form of thin ultrachrome paneling, had also been installed to the shoulders, collar, helmet, and arms, while the gauntlets, previously plated with cortosis weave, had been upgraded since Mk II. Both were now plated with ultrachrome armor, with carbon nanotube-reinforced durasteel construction, boasted a thick ablative layer and ceramic paneling to disrupt energy weapons, and most importantly, a very thin, fragile, but extremely useful plating of pure cortosis. While only able to survive a few strikes from a saber, they were still capable of disabling a blade. Useful? Very. In addition to that, phased plasma blades had been built into the forearms, giving him a very useful foot-long 'dagger' of raw plasma to use as a melee weapon.
As for the right weapon pod, it held a gyrojet gun, some 25MM in caliber. Though ammunition was limited to 80 rounds in the pod, each round contained a small 'kick charge' in its casing to give it a lethal initial velocity, while the round's rocket motor accelerated it to great speeds. A proximity-fuzed explosive charge, contained in the tip, delivered a rather grisly death to any organic caught in its blast, as the explosive would deliver dozens of razor-sharp armor-defeating tungsten flechettes in a forward spray. In terms of destructive power, it matched a repeating blaster but had a fraction of the energy requirements... And a fraction of the ammo and a low rate of fire.
A back-up weapon was strapped to the right pod. A pulse rifle, with folding stock, bolted to the pod and linked into the suit's power grid. Short-ranged but powerful, with a good rate of fire, the weapon delivered about as much firepower as a blaster rifle, though as it fired a packet of plasma it had superior armor-defeating characteristics and slightly superior velocity, though its heat generation was much more severe. A few non-volatile energy packs were tucked into the stock, in the event he had to break the weapon free and use it the old-fashioned way if he ditched Exodus for any reason.
His left forearm pod contained no weapons, and instead held an extra power supply, a highly experimental omniforge system which had been created with no small amount of help, and magseal field generators to bolster his suit's defensive shield grid. It would allow him to project an immensely powerful 'tower shield' with his left arm, or to condense the shield down to a narrow strip and funnel drive plasma into it to create a cutting blade similar in effect to a lightsaber; that shield pod would give his suit the defensive abilities it'd need to spar with a lightsaber.
Applique armor, in the form of thin ultrachrome paneling, had also been installed to the shoulders, collar, helmet, and arms, while the gauntlets, previously plated with cortosis weave, had been upgraded since Mk II. Both were now plated with ultrachrome armor, with carbon nanotube-reinforced durasteel construction, boasted a thick ablative layer and ceramic paneling to disrupt energy weapons, and most importantly, a very thin, fragile, but extremely useful plating of pure cortosis. While only able to survive a few strikes from a saber, they were still capable of disabling a blade. Useful? Very. In addition to that, phased plasma blades had been built into the forearms, giving him a very useful foot-long 'dagger' of raw plasma to use as a melee weapon.
As for the right weapon pod, it held a gyrojet gun, some 25MM in caliber. Though ammunition was limited to 80 rounds in the pod, each round contained a small 'kick charge' in its casing to give it a lethal initial velocity, while the round's rocket motor accelerated it to great speeds. A proximity-fuzed explosive charge, contained in the tip, delivered a rather grisly death to any organic caught in its blast, as the explosive would deliver dozens of razor-sharp armor-defeating tungsten flechettes in a forward spray. In terms of destructive power, it matched a repeating blaster but had a fraction of the energy requirements... And a fraction of the ammo and a low rate of fire.
A back-up weapon was strapped to the right pod. A pulse rifle, with folding stock, bolted to the pod and linked into the suit's power grid. Short-ranged but powerful, with a good rate of fire, the weapon delivered about as much firepower as a blaster rifle, though as it fired a packet of plasma it had superior armor-defeating characteristics and slightly superior velocity, though its heat generation was much more severe. A few non-volatile energy packs were tucked into the stock, in the event he had to break the weapon free and use it the old-fashioned way if he ditched Exodus for any reason.
The check soothed his worries - the suit's armament was functional, the power grid was running at full tilt with no issues, the cooling systems were in place and operational, and the myriad subsystems of Exodus were all primed and ready to rock and roll.
An alarm blared, and the rear bay hatch of his ship, Faith, fell downwards and held at an angle to form a ramp. They were at the drop point - three kilometers above the Jedi Temple, and two kilometers away. It was the closest they'd get.
Delun approached the edge of the ramp, and paused just at the edge. "Hey, Dex? Go to ground as fast as you can. Try not to go too far, though, in case I need you."
"That I can do. Good luck, master. And, as you organics are so fond of saying; May the Force be with you."
The feline didn't speak further. He stepped over the edge of the ramp, and fell into the howling wind rolling about in the ship's wake. A navpoint popped into existence in his HUD, pointing out the location of the Jedi Temple; a simple twist of his body rotated him towards his target. He engaged the suit's flight mode; panels opened up along the back of his calves and shoulders, exposing powerful drive systems. Airbrakes and flaps popped forth from the surface of the armor, and the drives in his boots and palms came on-line, all in the blink of an eye.
He could feel the winds change as air was caught and redirected by the aerodynamic surfaces of Exodus, and his entire form shifted as the thrusters overcame his momentum and accelerated him towards the Temple. He had no doubt the defense force at the Temple had him on their scopes; objects falling out of passing vessels rarely went completely unnoticed, and the raw energy and heat output of his suit rivaled that of the average starfighter. Exodus, it seemed, possessed incredibly powerful drives for its size.
Del wasn't terribly worried, though. The suit was too small for most gunners to achieve a proper lock, and by the time they received clearance to frag his tail, he'd be groundside. He only needed a few seconds. A few seconds to close kilometers of distance - needless to say, he was dumping all unnecessary power into his thrusters for a hard burn. He'd even had to equip secondary heat sinks to enable himself to conduct the drop without slagging his suit's primary heat sinks.
A small warning appeared in the top center of his HUD; a little red box with blinking white letters inside. Warning! 15 seconds to impact! He grinned wickedly; he was in. The feline cut his palm thrusters and tilted his boots e'er so slightly, turning himself right-side up so that his feet were aimed squarely at the ground.
The plan had been to use his suit's boot thrusters to keep himself from smashing groundside at high velocity. Had being the operative word. But as he entered the Temple's airspace, some smuck Alliance trooper decided that the giant suit of power armor screaming through the air didn't quite belong, and in no time at all alarms were blaring in Del's helmet.
"Warning. Missile. Warning. Missile."
A targeting lock had been achieved; if he had to venture a guess, it was either a stationary surface-to-air missile system, used to engage aerial targets outside the effective range of blaster cannons, or a man-portable surface-to-air missile. In either case, it was a SAM, and SAM's were bad for suits like Del's. Though they lacked the raw punch needed to tear apart the heavy suit's armor, and indeed frequently needed multiple hits just to down a starfighter, they had more than enough zip to knock him out of control. And if they managed that, they might as well have blown him in two.
He saw a streak of light rise up from the ground and rocket towards him, trailing behind it a pillar of white-gray smoke. He swore under his breath; there was no dodging it, not with only a few seconds between himself and his temple. "Flares!" Del barked; small rotary micro-flare launchers emerged from the outer edge of the suit's thigh armor, and rapidly emitted several dozen flares in a blaze of light, smoke, and fire. The flares not only emitted heat, they were interspersed with 'Smart' chaff modules; little bundles of ECM joy that duped missiles into targeting them.
It worked.
Sort of.
Sort of.
As Del pulled out of his dive towards the temple and began to roll to the side, with the intent of taking himself out of the missile's flight path, the SAM dove underneath Exodus and right into the plume of red-orange flares and chaff burning beneath him, where it detonated courtesy of its proximity fuze. The feline didn't even have time to swear before the concussive thump of the detonation overtook him, a blast of fire and smoke rolling over his suit as the shockwave knocked him about.
The armor took most of the impact, as he'd predicted. SAM's weren't designed to defeat armor, and rarely had any sort of effect on even the most lightly armored of targets. Even primitive anti-tank rifles tended to fare better against armor than they. But they were absolutely unbeatable when it came to showering people with shrapnel and concussive force; even with a good distance between himself and the detonation, Del still received enough of a blow to lose control.
He lost altitude, and fast. He spun around and around, and the many courtyards and gardens of the temple rose up to greet him with their stony floors and duracrete roofs. Not a particularly soft welcoming. His suit's alarm chimed; three seconds to impact. The temple was so big now, so massive and omnipresent. Delun didn't have any choice in landing spots; his thrusters had only just come back online, and it was all he could do to brake his descent and shed speed.
In fact, he was so busy trying to slow down that he failed to notice the massive, hardwood gazebo rising up from the temple grounds as if bent on snatching him from the sky. His eyes went to dinner-plate size in a split second.
"Aw, balls."
The roof splintered around him as he crashed through, shoulder-first. Wood shrieked and groaned as it met with the reinforced armor plate of his suit, which tore through unabated. A split second after bypassing the roof, he met the floor; wood, of course, raised a couple feet up off the stone ground. He barreled right through that as well, and crashed straight into the stonework laid out beneath.
Even stone didn't like him all that much. The surface of the ground crumbled beneath his suit, cracking and splintering into dust as it absorbed the shock of his landing. The gazebo caved in around him, too old to have taken the abuse that it had, leaving him buried in a pile of ancient lumber and roofing.
Del, annoyed to no end by the roughness of his landing, stuck one arm up through the rubble and promptly gave the sky a middle-finger salute. "**** you too, anti-air," he grumbled bitterly.
A quick check revealed that his suit was still fully operational, though some of the cosmetic paneling was dinged up and the paint was likely to be ruined in a few places. It was desperate to ditch the secondary heat sinks he'd fitted to it, too. He slowly pushed himself up out of the lovely crater he'd formed and shook off the wreckage laying across his suit.
He was able to extricate himself from what was left of the gazebo after a few seconds of struggling, and once free, he jettisoned his secondary heat sinks. The small, disc-shaped heat sinks, once intricate constructions of heat-absorbing alloys and micro-piping for liquid coolant, were little more than vaguely circular chunks of white-hot metal that deformed when they struck the ground. The glowing slots which they had been jettisoned from, on the back shoulders of his suit just above the main drives, sealed up again the moment they were clear of the suit.
He glanced around himself as his suit rid itself of the ruined sinks. He'd landed in a courtyard - not the main one, fortunately. It seemed deserted, and his suit's sensor package wasn't picking up any life forms in the immediate area. Needless to say, he was grateful for that, as his less than graceful landing had not only gone unseen, it hadn't injured anyone!
The cat sighed in relief, then glanced back at what was left of the gazebo. He half-expected it to be half-standing, at least. What he saw amounted to a bonfire, all piled up and ready to be lit! The supports had collapsed inwards, the roof was caved in, the floor was kindling; it was a real mess.
"...Oops."
The feline shook his head and chuckled ruefully. Knowing that there was nothing he could do to fix it now, he simply stepped away from the wreckage and took a look around.
The courtyard was some sort of place of meditation, if he had to guess; rock gardens lined the outer walls, and well-kept fountains and flowerbeds lined the flagstone walkways. It was a gorgeous place, and he felt just the slightest twinge of guilt for invading it in such a horribly messy fashion. Somewhere out there, the gods of housekeeping were already preparing a horrible punishment for his crime.
Chuckling mirthfully at the thought, Del strode towards the center of the courtyard. The space was about fifty meters across and a perfect square, and its flagstone paths neatly divided the courtyard into four equal quadrants. At the center was an ancient willow, which the path formed a circle around; Delun approached the tree, and as he did so, lowered his defenses within the Force.
And as he did so, his presence in the Force became plainly obvious. Those alert to a change in the Force around them would find it hard to miss him; he was a flare, a bright light in the web of life surrounding Tython. Yet he was raw, undisciplined; whatever training he once had was long forgotten, and he had become primal and unrestrained, scarcely able to hide his ability at the best of times.
Perhaps needless to say, it felt good to shed his defenses. To feel life ebb and flow around him again was as refreshing as it was frightening - for all that life belonged to the Order, and he was tresspassing on their turf. He'd done so once before, helping Christian Noble to erase his presence from their archives, and now he was back again. This time, his intentions were not selfless; he had questions and a past locked away in the depths of his mind, and his gut instinct told him that the Jedi might, just might, have the tools to give him the answers he needed.
Whether he liked it or not, he needed them - but they neither knew nor needed him, and for his own sake, he had brought firepower and the means to extract himself from a sticky situation. He remembered a proverb that dealt with the situation nicely; "A soft voice and warm heart will solve most any problem - a sharp blade and show of claws will handle whatever's left."
The feline planted his gauntlets on the heavily reinforced hips of his armor, and stood just in front of the tree, on the single path facing the main body of the temple. A door was set into the wall there, but none of the other walls bore doors as far as he could tell; his 'welcome party' would come from there, if he had to venture a guess. And it was only a matter of time until they arrived, too! His arrival had not been subtle in the slightest, and he'd made certain every halfway powerful Jedi in the temple was aware of his presence by dropping his defenses. They'd come, and they'd no doubt be quick and on-guard; an intruder in the temple wasn't cause for them to come bearing tea and crumpets, after all!
[ooc: questions? pm me. :3]
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