Shadow in the Night

[Vayla Mirana]

Spoiler: Music OOC

If, by uncanny design, darkness is bright,
It is by the universe, a force that curves
Over itself, the fabrics of space and time.
O shadow in the light, for me you burn.

Galactic skylines, starships in armadas.
Space stations, death rays of scarlet.
Planets of annihilation.
Broken moons.
Oceans of tombs.

A woman, a Pantoran, dreams.
When she sleeps, she sees things.
Voices in her head. When she wakes, no more of them
Nightmares…they scare her…when she goes to sleep…
Heavy heartbeats…thunder thumping…and...quaking…
Woman faces her fears…as darkness lingers over her…

Tonight, the woman does not sleep.
The Jedi, she must fly atop the streets.
To get there, she stands on a building.
Not a ledge, on the edge, and watching.

She is a Jedi, accustomed to a hooded white robe streaked in blue.
Or a tan jacket, black pants, a casual outfit, sporting her black boots.
Not tonight. In the dark, beneath the stars, cloudless skies, and moon.
Stands a woman, the lady of night and daylight, donned in a blue suit.

Reminiscent of an exoskeleton, it grants her movement and is form-fitting.
Motionless, silent at night, the woman lowers herself and is now crouching.
Beneath her feet, speeders fly back and forth, speeding beneath the clouds.
Above those streets so far beneath, those who walk the land are so far down.

A woman can’t see them, but that’s okay. She’s not looking at them anyway.
Not at the speeders, the vehicles blaring in traffic, whipping within that wind.
It blows against her, gusts against a breath of fire, fruitless, can’t blow away.
Blue hair down to jaw, a tempest laps at it, but undisturbed is the woman.

In between the zooming things, blurs of headlights lighting the night, a building.
Windows beneath boots and duracrete at the edge of a building and its rooftop.
The woman cannot see within them, has no angle from her position—but sees.
Eyes are closed, her vision is different, ocular prosthetics, the Force is strong.

Now...show…me…where…you…are.
Feminine figure, a still sculpture.
Stands still, lethal but idle arms.
Light the way…darkness...burn.

The woman sees what she was looking for, yes, she senses a presence.
No cards to her heart, this isn’t a game, but the Force is still like an art.
A woman, a Knight, a Jedi, black fire in the night, fighting for the light side.
Against the darkness, the Jedi goes alone, dancing the edge as a Shadow.

Eyes closed, she spreads her arms, she leans forward, and falls off the edge.
And the wind takes her, carries her like a bird, but she doesn’t fly, she glides.
Drifting down, face mask now a crown, a leaf in the wind, facing the planet.
Surface is lost in the mist of speeders racing in mazes and webs of skylanes.

The shadow that falls beneath the moonlight avoids all those vehicles though.
Falling behind the skylane, alongside the building, that skyscraper’s windows.
A way down, the shadow suddenly bursts alight, emerges alive, and it moves.
Quick, sudden, flipping forward, facing the window with two hands, she shoots.

No blasters, no magic, the Force is at her fingertips and it shatters that glass.
Before gravity cruelly drags her further downward toward the ground at that.
Instantly, her own momentum of curling in the air breaks inertia, and she’s in.
Following her Force push, the Jedi Shadow flew through. And now...it begins…

 

[Vayla Mirana]

Spoiler: Music OOC

Like static in the ears, that crackling noise of the enemy’s voice.
She had sensed them before entering, seen them by eye unseen.
For hers was the sight of the Jedi—that third eye that each brings.
In the sunlight, in the moonlight, from Pantora, Vayla Mirana poised.

From the rooftop she flew, blink and you’ll miss it, a quicksilver bird.
She's not an assassin but she has a target, and they have her answers.
For them, justice burns, black bright shadow, though they have exits.
So she moved, fast and true, blue Pantoran, making a rapid entrance.

Pantoran, but she’s more than, her presence is beyond species.
The Jedi, they are their own creatures, battling against the beasts.
Beneath the night sky, the stars carried her, as they had from birth.
Pale shadow from stars born, by star wars bringing war to the earth.

Resistance. A Jedi expects it. A Jedi is the resistance.
Against the dark side, yes, against the old darkness.
A Jedi Knight fights on the front line, day and night.
A Shadow, on the other hand, fights in the below.

Not in the dark, but by the dark, straddling the line in between.
Not a circle, it isn’t so round, but it makes its own kind of shape.
A lightsaber takes shapes as the Jedi moves her hands and feet.
She isn’t violent but she brings violence and tonight she will slay.

Through the glass, open window, past the frame, in she goes.
She flies, she floats, she glides, and she knows how to fight.
Jedi Knight—she wears no cloak, but this Jedi was cloaked.
Cameras were first, alarm sensors, Force signature alight.

-Bzz!- -Whir!- the noise of her lightsaber as it purrs, one voice against security droids.
One on the left, one on the right, seeing with photoreceptors for eyes upon that Jedi.
They had not expected her, their mistake, for she had expected them, right and left.
Raised blasters, programmed to shoot first as shots go off across the room’s floor.

As guns cough the Jedi is on them, slashing, deflecting bolts back at the metal heads.
In instants, one by one, they begin to break, tossed aside like broken dolls by a hand.
No hilt in it, fingers curl, unfurl, slamming one droid into the other, piling into a mess.
By the walls, in the corners, the droids fall, limbs and heads and all, until none stand.

They were an effective defense, she’d guess, against someone else who isn’t a Jedi.
At best, however, to her they were merely a distraction, an obstacle blocking her prize.
Amid the scene of her making, blaster burns on furniture and smashed whiskey glass.
While the Knight had been fighting the golems her package had fled, her target, a man.

You can run. So can she. This office, like a lounge, private till she found it. But you can’t hide.
She was fast, not fast enough, the door opening into a corridor before the Force found him.
Failing to pull him back, he runs and she dashes after him, past the broken droids either side.
The hallway one step away, the door slams shut in her face, strong steel plate, in a defiant hiss.

Another obstacle, another delay, but the Jedi is patient, she can wait. Up comes the sword again.
The blue blade penetrates, juts through to the other end, and that Knight’s arm begins to rotate.
Slowly. Steady. He won’t get far. She senses the direction he’s headed in. He won’t escape yet.
Tricks up his sleeve, door panel blinking, but by a burning blade that door gave way just then.

-Thunk!- Another hunk of metal, circle so round, crashes to the floor, ringing out in the corridor.
No one is around to hear it. The Shadow picked her night well, off hours in this baron’s building.
D’aron Garshal, here I come. Cameras are above, watching her, but they don’t matter anymore.
She marches, hears polished shoes beyond ears when from around a corner comes something.

Whatever it is, whether her target’s defense, it won’t last.
He can throw droids at her, more and more, set his traps.
The Executive Director of Gard Mechanicals can’t resist.
For, against a Shadow, Jedi Knight, she is the resistance.

 

[Vayla Mirana]

Spoiler: Music OOC

Conflicted. Distracted. To be caught so off guard by her very own target. The man of Gard.
Foregoing the front entrance, bypass all those levels, crash through window, take out guards.
Security droids, casting blasters for their noise, blasted back by a Jedi’s voice, and her arms.
Undetected, she's unrelenting, unwavering. A bit rusty in her determination. Queue alarms.

From rooftop stance she had hacked, had dispensed of certain security elements, in her quest.
Working her way through, it was supposed to be just one moment of snatching back that man.
Eliminate his robots, interrogate him with both hands, but a Jedi knows not all goes as planned.
So she adapts, in the span of seconds, waiting for it, her new enemy, and it comes, yes, it steps.

Into the light from the shadows, but whatever it is, it does not yet know. This Jedi is the Shadow!
The sound of chains comes her way, a kind of rattling, vibrating, rolling metal, scraping of steel.
Nearer, but she has no fear. In that corridor, it appears, standing before her, and it is not alone.
One of two, rolling in like balls or wheels, to stand as a tall wall. Droidekas. Or akin, just as real.

The Jedi doesn’t hesitate. Silver hilt, blue blade, the lightsaber can’t penetrate the droid’s shields.
No matter, no time to waste, she moves just as soon as they prepare to fire till bolts soar her way.
-PING!- Her sword deflects, to the right and to the left, one hand’s grip, other hand’s fingers peel.
Swing of hand, disabling a droid, causing it to short-circuit through the power of the Force’s gaze.

One droid left, firing at her, just as the Shadow takes to the air, keeping blade up to ward off the bolts.
Up and away, flying forward, landing right when the droid begins to turn toward her, in iron so cold.
Lightsaber blade retracts back into hilt, hand forms fist, she punches with it, through the barrier.
On the other side, finger on switch, reignites cyan light, impales metal and wire, then it’s over.

Horizontal sweep, swing the blade the other way, taking the head off the droid before it can wake.
Done. Now move, Vay. She hasn’t won yet. Seconds had passed but enough for her prey to run.
D’aron Garshal, Gard Mechanicals’ ED, whose secrets sleep inside his head. Making an escape.
Won’t get far. Vayla promises herself, sensing his presence, his movements. You wormy slug.

Heading for an elevator, the Shadow is in pursuit, hot on his heels, darting through the corridors.
More guards, of course, each one a droid, humanoid like the others, on both sides of the hallway.
Front and back, blasters raised, they chase, they fire. Saber raised, she doesn’t delay, runs forth.
A whirlwind, quick as lightning, blocking bolts behind while her free hand casts forth the Force.

A push, a wave, a current of wind that sends droids toppling into one another, she moves ahead.
They fall just in time for Vayla to avoid the barrage of bolts from the back as she leaps over them.
A shadow, but she becomes blinding light, a blur of wind, lightsaber slicing through necks still left.
End of corridor, she turns a corner, kicks off. There you are. Now she sees him, his corporate head.

Drat. His elevator doors close as he smiles, the lift moving downward. Got to be for the first floor.
It made sense. No time to fight them, no need. Elevators on her right while on her left is a door.
Overhead a sign says, a symbol depicts the rest; next moment Vayla moves, covers ground.
Door swings up, opens stairwell, no need for stairs. A gap in the middle leads down. Now.

 

[Vayla Mirana]

Spoiler: Music OOC

D’aron Garshal. The ED of Gard Mechanicals. This man was proving to be quite a handful.
His assailant had him in her hand, if not quite his assassin, there within his skyscraper pad.
Past the glass, broken window, the shadow had descended, but he had escaped into the hall.
Time passed, past the droids the Shadow destroyed, down the stairwell, yet ever the man ran.

The woman was at his back, sensing his presence, not too far, if deeper below, flying in his lift.
The elevator took him toward the ground floor, his pursuer presumed; what took her was wind.
She flew too, through the gap in the middle of stairs, flight after flight, a Jedi disguised in a suit.
A kind of exoskeleton, as much for protection as its mask was to hide her face despite her blade.

Alarms might’ve blared but she had done her fair share to incapacitate certain security systems.
Not enough, she reckoned, as guns began blasting bolts in her direction by droids showing up.
Blasters trained at her as she fell, her attackers appearing at stairwells, emerging below, above.
What bolts didn’t miss were instead met with the blade of a lightsaber, blocking with wrist-flick.

There you are. Body twirling, taking off heads and limbs, the Knight swung her sword in an arc.
She would be forgiven for focusing her Force vision on her target, her quarry, on that Human.
D’aron Garshal, it was him that Vayla trained her gaze on behind the wall, falling beside him.
The Executive Director of this tech corporation would not get away and would not get far.

Animated, Vayla levitated above the first floor. D’aron might have taken the roof but knew better.
That exit was her entrance. Ground level was surely guarded. Reaching it, she burst through a door.
Guards met her, more droids, firing, while she deflected, blade parrying as their weapons met hers.
Where are you!? The lobby elevators were grounded save for one. I see…heading beneath the floor…

No time to waste, she couldn’t stay to play with the droids. Vayla’s sword thwarted one last barrage.
With that, she dashed away, the Force propelling her movements into the distance of the building.
Toward the entrance and her exit, but it’s not her escape, sensing that her target is himself leaving.
VIP access, perhaps, the elevator shaft that may take him further down into an underground garage.

Outside, the Jedi Knight becomes a blur, lightsaber retracting into the hilt as she advances.
Down, to the right, a shadow beneath the night, swerving below building lights, she pounces.
Something was coming, rumbling behind a wall, but its metal was a door that just then opened.
There she stood, a woman before a speeding ship, and Vayla flipped, just as her blade reignited.

The lightsaber slashed through the front end of the speeder, severing the vessel into two halves.
Both ends bounced, scraping across the duracrete, toward an adjacent building, and smashed.
Flames spewed up, the cockpit’s canopy opened up too, as a lone figure emerged from it.
Desperate to survive, he ejected, flying into the wind, right before he was caught by a fist.

Vayla curled her fingers in, pulling her target toward her, only to sling him into the distance.
The man screamed as he drifted into shadows away from the commotion, but unbroken.
His captor kept his bones intact by stopping her hand as his back was pinned on a wall.
This was a private compound but this incident would not remain a secret for long at all.

Away from the immediate explosion, Vayla turned the corner and followed her hand forth.
The man was lowered, allowing him to catch his breath for a moment as he lifted his head.
“Are you going to kill me?” D'aron sounded brave if afraid, and a Jedi knows one can be both.
There in the shadows, a Shadow stands, pointing toward him, hand gripping the hilt of a sword.

“It would be easy to,” she admits. “But that is up to you.” Words twist.
You rushed this, Vay. Emotion, yet peace. See how the man is on his knees.
“Gard Mechanicals has been doing business with certain criminal entities.”
She held up a device from her belt. “But this was found on a dark side cultist.”

About the size of a fingernail, the object was illuminated by the light of the Jedi’s saber.
D’aron Garshal’s gaze glowed in turn, focusing on the small thing, giving her his eyes.
“Do you know what this is?” You’re testing me. It’s a game to you and I’m another player.
“I know you do. It was made by you.” Eyes into eyes. “Tell me everything. And do not lie.”

 

[Vayla Mirana]

Spoiler: Music OOC

His eyes. Black pupils. Black irises. Nothing so unusual. But darker in the light of my lightsaber.
She mused, glued her gaze in his, yet all he saw of hers were two dark blue gems for eyes.
Visors embedded in the sockets of her mask, a whole head covering, concealing the Jedi.
But not you. The man’s face was naked in the night, in the light, where a lightsaber burns.

“How would you know if I’m telling you the truth?” D’aron spoke with the faintest grin.
“Your eyes. Your lips. How they move.” Vayla shrugged. “I have my ways. Do not delay.”
“You Jedi are all the same.” He spat. “Arrogant, elitist, self-righteous, lacking in vision.”
Oh? What’s this? She studied him, listened. “You’re old, outdated, like your little blade.”

Contempt for the Jedi. Nothing new there. Yet this is a curious creature. “Tell me more, sir.”
“Ha! You think this is a game? Mundanes like me will one day inherit power over the Force.”
Most curious. “You mean to say you are not Force-sensitive but plan to…what, open the door?”
“I’d rather eat a bolt.” His face sank. A pit of hatred. “Didn’t say power of the Force…power over.”

A moment of silence, ensuing between two units of the galaxy, neither on the same side of the fence.
“Spoken like a slaver.” D’aron appeared to hesitate, as if deliberating the accuracy of Vayla's statement.
“To an extent.” What in the stars are you talking about? It was time to stop asking herself those questions.
“What is this device? What does it do? How was it made? What was it doing inside a darksider’s flesh?"

“That’s all you’re getting out of me.” He looked right, looked left. “Better hurry up. Either free me or kill me.”
Kill. I will. If I must. “For all your animosity toward my Order, you know little of our code. We aren't assassins.”
“So go and tell that to the dead men, women and children of the Clone Wars, of Mandalore. But time is ticking.”
The audacity. “There are always casualties of war, cost of peace. I'm not here to discuss our errors with a Sith.”

He blinked. Then he laughed. Then he guffawed. It might yet be one way for him to test her blade and be heard.
“Dumb bitch. You just don’t get it. Jedi or Sith, blue sword or red sword, your beef means nothing to me, freak.”
Enough of this. “Tell me what this is!” Vayla commanded, with the Force, but D’aron Garshal spoke no further.
“You will tell me.” Her hand passed by her face. His smile broadened. “Your mind tricks won’t work on me.”

He definitely wasn’t weak-minded to begin with; an intelligent businessman, head honcho of a technology corporation.
Trained to resist the likes of me, potentially. Maybe if this Jedi had two other Jedi beside her, but Vayla Mirana stood alone.
No. The Force is with me. The light. The light. The light. On his face. “You’re worried. Not about me.” Emotions in the shadows.
He looked away. “Maybe even frightened, but not of me. This thing wasn’t supposed to be found.” Truth in an interrogation.

“Prototypes succeed or they fail.”
Prototype? His face. Turning pale?
“That likely won’t function again.
But all this still means my head.”
His eyes, again to the right, left.
“My wife. Daughter. Don’t let—”
Something struck him just then.
A hole in his head. He was dead.

A blaster bolt had penetrated D’aron Garshal’s skull in an instant.
Vayla didn’t hesitate, trading her gaze from the kill to the distance.
Instinct flooded her, seeing no one on the ground, so she looked up.
There. A lone figure on the roof of a building, moving, intending to run.

 

[Vayla Mirana]

Spoiler: Music OOC

There she was, a shadow in the night, lit up only by a flashlight if catching her suit of armor.
Suit of blue, fitted to form, a bit like an exoskeleton from toe to hip to breast and to helmet.
Mask, with two shapes for eyes that hide those cybernetic implants; stealth is her business.
In the darkness, it would be hard to make her out otherwise, as the shadow moves. It turns.

Toward the direction where the blaster bolt had come from that had claimed D’aron Garshal.
Assassin. A lone figure on the roof, it moved, dashing into the distance. Vayla is no marshal.
Yet, in her own way, the Jedi Knight did chase fugitives, to bring them to justice, like this one.
Whoever it was, it was running after it committed a crime, and so this Jedi Knight was just.

Quick enough? That was another argument. Her best bet was to move as swiftly as she can be.
Call it in, maybe, yet her own faction had no knowledge of her being here. It was what it was.
So, unable to interrogate her quarry anymore, the shadow soared, jumping high from below.
Toward a building’s balcony, then another, hopping. Go, Vay. Go like time around an arrow!

She would bring D’aron Garshal’s assassin to justice, and she would get her answers.
One way or the other. Nothing else mattered. The stakes were raised, if yet too deep.
Prototypes succeed. Vayla remembered Garshal’s speech. Or they fail. Also that ‘freak’.
He had clearly been a prejudiced person when it came to the Force and its members.

Whatever the true nature of the device that Vayla had priced from a darksider’s flesh…
Well, her suspect could no longer answer any more of her questions, but this other one?
Reaching the rooftop, the shadow in the night moved on, hopping across a gap, held breath.
She exhaled. Where are you? Can’t tell in night’s veil. No assassin. No ship. If naked in the sun.

Some dumb expression, maybe, but in comparison it meant that a shadow could see in night.
She sensed, like any Jedi would, or any Sith for that matter, reaching out to detect a presence.
She walked forward across the rooftop, feeling the fabrics of life and death, in darkness or light.
Oh… It was then that she realized. A little more lifeless. The irony. As a bolt flew toward her chest.

 

[Vayla Mirana]

Spoiler: Music OOC

A bolt flies. So does a shadow in the night. Violence was not her order. Her Order was not violent.
However, when she has to utilize it, this is one Shadow who knows how to fight. Hers is brightness.
Lightsaber. Brightly lit. Cyan blade. Deflection. She swings her weapon. The bolt gets ripped away.
The Shadow storms forward even as other bolts came from her attacker. Deflected by her blade.

This presence she sensed, the shooter now in view to the shadow, was detected in another sense.
Her opponent had no flesh or bone, though it moved like a person might. It had speed and strength.
Poised to kill her just like D’aron Garshal had been killed. A killer. Vayla thought. And an assassin droid.
It held its ground when the Jedi bound toward it. It caught onto what she was quickly enough. Destroy.

A Jedi was a Jedi. A Shadow was her own Jedi though. Ever on the line between light and darkness.
Not in the sense of trying to be both by any means. The Jedi Shadows were always loyal to the light.
In fact, it was from the light that the shadow was cast. The dark side had no shadows. Only the night.
Despite this, Vayla familiarized herself with how to destroy with her blade. Like this droid as she arcs it.

Another bolt parried, cast away to die in the night, the assassin’s rifle clearly designed for destruction.
Yet Vayla is up closer and personal now. In only moments, she arrives, darting toward her opponent.
And she crosses the distance. Two foes fighting alone on the rooftop. She crosses her sword. Try THIS!
The blaster was no match for the lightsaber. However, just as she swings, the droid steps and dodges.

Its mechanical limbs whip into the distance as it flips to the Shadow’s left flank.
Damn it's fast. It made sense given its occupation, such as it was. And it attacks.
Though it’s no longer a blaster coming at her. The droid had a sword of its own.
Vibrating blade, black as night, yet brilliant as beskar, ready to cleave into bone.

Vayla pivoted to her right at the right moment.
Her weapon shifted at the same time to block.
But did not knock its blade away. You are strong!
It wouldn’t last long as she shoved and closed in.