trans_9 | Choices, Choices

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Choices, Choices

Arha was standing in a blank Sensorium, frowning slightly into the white expanse of it. She'd walked in, paused, and had been stuck there, waffling hard between scenarios for a full fifteen minutes. On one hand, she wanted to pit her skills against something deadly, on the other hand, she wanted to practice her stealth, and on the hand she didn't have, she would have liked to try her hand at, perhaps, riding a Drexl. She had seen them in the holos that were available on the worlds within the Jed-Eye home universe. They were quite fierce.

And thinking of holos simply made her wish to spend time wandering Luke's Jed-Eye Temple.

The indecision was annoying.

As such, the space around her remained blank and Arha was stuck contemplating the swing of her white cloak and the way it settled against her equally white leather clad legs. She ought ti know what she wanted, but now? Now she was at a loss.

"This is no way to begin," she muttered to herself and sighed as she used the Force to play around with her lightsaber.

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"Such should be a good place to test our skills as a unit," Arha murmured. "I will enjoy this, I think. I...think I have visited once in the Sensorium. I could be wrong, though. It is a fuzzy thing."

Arha disliked the fuzziness a great deal.

"Sounds exactly like the kind of place I'd expect to find Mara. It's going to be interesting, no doubt." Ysalamiri were going to make it quite the challenge indeed.

"We're going to have to watch each other's backs. The vornskrs--those are the predators--come up silently and strike fast, and without the Force we're going to need to be on our toes. Good practice, though." Luke looked thoughtful. "Relying on the Force too heavily has its problems."

He was quiet, thinking back to what Mara had told him when they'd been trekking through the caves on Nirauan. It never hurt to keep reminding himself of her insights. Even though she was gone (and that thought brought a pang of grief to Luke's heart) she never stopped teaching him new things. "Well, if you're both ready, I'll get the program started."

"I am ready," Arha said with a nod, as always watchful and alert. "I think this shall be a good session for practicing. One must remember to never rely too much on any one thing. Balance, yes? This is what we seek?" That included non-Force abilities as much as it did Force skills. To that end, Arha had her crysknife in its sheath, and she it be warranted, she could hook it to her lightsaber. The double blade had proved to be most effective in many situations.

Kyle double checked his blaster. It might not be the most effective thing against the vornskrs, but it was good to make sure you had every tool in the tool box you could. Turning to Luke he nodded. "I'm ready. Let's go."

"All right," he said, voice just a bit distant as he called to mind the forest he'd trekked through on Myrkr, with a blaster pointed at his back. Around them, the forest emerged, gradually replacing the white blankness of the Sensorium walls until it was complete and corporeal. Huge, twisted trees rose above them, blocking out most of the natural light, and the roots created an uneven terrain that made going slow.

"I remember this as being about half a day away from Hyllard City," he said. "Even so, that doesn't mean that it'll be easier or the predators any less frequent or deadly. And with the ysalamiri blocking the Force"--a slight shudder as that particular effect kicked in--"It'll be difficult. We must be cautious. Arha, you're in the middle; Kyle, you're point."

Arha froze as the Force was abruptly blocked and blinked as if someone had, without warning, delivered a hard right hook. She took a moment to digest the loss, then remembered to breathe, and nodded. It felt so very strange not to feel the Force--almost as if a piece of her had been sliced away. She settled into the middle position silently, compensating for the loss of the Force by enhancing her other senses.

She was every inch Fremen and Bene Gesserit now as she firmly pushed aside her unease. Arha was trained in the use of both knives and lightsaber. She would be fine, especially with Luke and Kyle.

"This place is very green," Arha said, her voice a little off, still. "Ah, trees." She said the word as it were a completely foreign concept, and to her, they really were.

Kyle nodded in acknowledgment, and moved into the point position. As he frowned as he felt the Force slip away. He would adapt, but he didn't like losing any edge. To compensate he fell back on his training from Carida. Slowly he moved forward with his blaster at the low ready. Eyes open he was prepared for whatever may come.

"Hyllard City is west of our position," Luke said to Kyle.

Ordinarily he'd have stretched out with his senses, searching for the kinds of minds that were associated with predators. Watchfulness, the readiness to strike--those things were what he looked out for. But without that, Luke had to rely on his own senses. Luckily, being married to Mara for so long had given him a chance to watch and learn from her, and his own desires not to rely so heavily on the power of the Force itself had helped.

Still, he was at a disadvantage here. Arha and Kyle had their previous training to fall back on. Luke didn't, so he pushed his hearing as far as it would go and made sure his lightsaber was in his hand, ready to be ignited if he heard the sound of approaching paws.

The name might have been unfamiliar to Arha, but she took note of it anyway. It was not to her lightsaber that she brushed her fingers against, but her knife. It would do no good to keep it out, but it was at the ready and her reflexes were quick. She let the sounds of the jungle wash over her and sifted through them for anything dangerous. Selective filtering was always handy. Such were a Bene Gesserit's natural defense when it came to many things, up to and including politics and knowing things from one corner of a dinner table.

As the training took over Kyle adjusted to the sounds, and smells of the jungle. You couldn't depend on your eyes alone. Everything in a place like this learned long ago how to avoid being seen. Which meant he had to do the same. Already he was moving from tree to tree pausing to blend in, and sight his next point of movement before proceeding. When he thought he'd seen something he'd signal the others to stop before checking it out.

Even without the Force he lived up to his surname quite well.

Luke, not quite as sneaky as his wife or any of the other Jedi with outside training, nonetheless did the best he could. The muscle control he utilized as a Jedi wasn't entirely based in the Force, and he used it all to keep from making too much noise as he moved mostly silently behind the other two, ears straining for any sound other than that of their passing.

Sure enough it wasn't long before his head snapped around, lightsaber barely coming up in time to startle the attacking vornskr into halting its forward motion. The green-white blade wasn't much of a repellent for long, however, and by the sound of it this vornskr wasn't alone.

He'd never even have heard it if he hadn't been on alert already and listening for it. Even then, it had been close.

Arha found herself moving even before she'd consciously reacted, her knife already in hand as she flipped out of the way as the beast immediately went for her throat. An instant later, her own white lightsaber flicked on as she'd attached the crysknife blade to the end of her lightsaber. Without the use of the Force, Arha's abilities rested in The Weirding Way. She blurred, letting time slow around her as the vorskr charged again. There were others, too, lurking in the shadows--a pack behavior. They were circling, herding, trapping.

Canine, by the look of them, and sleek, efficient killing machines. Admirable creatures.

Her lightsaber went flying a second later as the snap-hiss of a tail cracked across her wrist. She twisted at the last moment and felt teeth score her shoulder even as her hands came up to slam down on the vorskr's delicate ears. The creature yelped and snapped at her again. Arha barely managed to keep the teeth from her throat and slammed the heel of her palm into the creature's throat. Her lightsaber was definitely out of reach, now, and her wrist was starting to numb even as she worked to purge the toxin.

Her attacks and the beast's were both quick and the battle itself was decidedly matched.

Kyle ducked as one of the creatures leaped at him trying to get him by the neck. As it passed over him he fired repeatedly into it's belly. The thing snarled at him, and let out a small whimper. It was still in the fight though. He could hear the others now. Pack predators, who ambushed their prey. Very fierce clearly, but nothing out of the ordinary for a jungle.

Locking eyes with the one he'd already wounded he started circling it waiting for it to pounce. When it did he stepped out of the way and delivered a swift kick to where he'd already shot it. This was followed up by another shot right into its hind legs. It yelped, and tried to limp off to its pack. He'd have prefered to finish it off quickly, but since they were so tough he'd have to settle for slowing them down first.

Igniting his lightsaber in his other hand he prepared for the pack's retaliation.

Luke decided that previous encounters with the vornskrs--and their cloned, bioengineered cousins the voxyn--still weren't enough to prepare him really for an encounter with them. But his goal was to keep Arha and Kyle from getting in over their heads. Kyle appeared to have things under control for the moment, so with one eye still on him just in case, Luke came up behind the one attacking Arha, watching its lashing tail.

When he'd met Karrde's pet vornskrs, their tails had been docked and they'd been more or less calm. Still predators, still very deadly, but they hadn't been wild. And while he could amputate this one's tail, if it were a real vornskr in the wild it then wouldn't be aggressive enough to hunt on its own, and it would die. It wasn't right to him. He didn't have to kill it.

When the vornskr snapped again for Arha's throat, he lunged forward, dodging the tail that whipped his way and jabbing his lightsaber into its side with the hissing sizzle of burning flesh.

She did not pause, but to shoot a quiet, mental thanks Luke's way as she rolled to retrieve her lightsaber. The next second, she was a blur and had slammed her crysknife tip straight through the creature's skull, twisted, removed it, and grimaced as she tried to turn her lightsaber back on.

It didn't work. Arha drew a breath. The Force dampening effect, of course. One of her curved sections of carvings along her ornate hilt hid a toggle, cleverly recessed and covered by flowing scroll. She had made sure it was well disguised--worthy of a Bene Gesserit, perhaps--just in case of a situation such as this. With no Force available to toggle the inside switch, the external connected to that switch was of use, despite her annoyance in having to rely on it.

The milk-white blade hissed as it extended.

Arha moved to back Kyle up just as she heard the hissing snarl of the pack charging.

The snarled, and eyed Kyle. He didn't need to the Force to sense their hate of him right now. The first member of the pack that moved forward to defend leaped at Kyle, and swiftly had it's head removed. Normally he'd prefer to not have to kill the creatures, but they weren't giving him a choice. At least if he did this maybe he could scare the rest off. This was what he prepared his students for. When their backs would be up against the wall, and they didn't have that choice anymore.

Holding out his lightsaber he moved it from vornskr to vornskr aiming at each he could see in turn. They were going to move cautious now, but he was sure they had plenty of cunning to make up for it.

Luke moved to a position on the opposite side of Kyle from Arha, his green-white blade glowing bright in the darkness of the forest. Around them, the vornskrs growled and snapped, but Luke kept his gaze steady and his blade out, sweeping it in arcs. He was tense, waiting for that moment he knew was close.

It came. One of the vornskrs lunged for him, and with a twinge of sadness, Luke dealt it a blow with his blade. Not one to immediately kill it, just incapacitate it so it might get up and limp away later. It didn't matter that these weren't real creatures, he had to treat them the same. Besides, these things were partially responsible for him and Mara coming together.

From a certain point of view.

Arha found herself locked in battle with another vornksr of her own and used every inch of her speed to her advantage, she killed, though, and was sad for it. They were fierce things, worthy of more honor, but their teeth were not as sharp as her own. Lightsaber and crysknife were barely enough, but she had settled into the rhythm of defense and offense, the dance that wove her around and between the two Jed-Eye as she deflected or maimed...or killed.

A leap for her throat became a howl of pain, claws that flashed for her face met her shoulder and she did not stop moving, twisting, bending herself to fit the situation. Arha knew she would be bruised and sliced when this was over, but it was good training. In a lull, she found herself back to back with Kyle and took a moment to breathe.

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Choices, Choices

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ugh sorry this took so long

Re: ugh sorry this took so long