Coruscant

[Jet Almeara]

Oh goody..she got to break down the door - she doubted it would be as satisfying as blowing it apart with the force would be but it was certainly a decent release for the tension creeping along the tunnel had built up. Jet had never been fond of the more subtle approaches to things, perhaps it was her training from Grifter but she was far more a kick the door down type then sneak in through a window type and the rookie she was currently sharing time was seemed to feel much the same.

In any case there wasn't any hesitation as she joined Taaru in jogging towards the train, hitting the let side of the door with a second resounding ding only moments after Taaru, palming one of the many devices the armor had upon it as she went, a flash bang type of grenade the rookies knowledge supplied her with. Glancing at Taaru she reached out to try the door and when it proved to be unlocked she armed the device, cracked the door and flung it in to detonate before throwing the door wide for Taaru. Not nearly as much fun as blowing it to small pieces with the force.

[Taaru Masako]

His visor reflects the weak light from the lights in the train as it focuses on her. As the flashbang sails past him, he starts counting down from five, audible enough to be heard on their shared comm line.

"Fünf...vier...drei...," noise and light, the suit's optics compensating its nightvision by increasing the HUD's opacity,"zwei...eins."

The characteristic whine of servomotors echoes back down the tunnel as the suit assists him in leaping up onto the train's floor, without the need to drag himself onto it. He quickly sweeps the the angles of the train, his HUD-synch with the rifle's optics superimposed over the majority of his field of vision. The interior was sparse, the plastisteel seats and aluminum handrails not offering much space to effectively hide behind.

Movement on the far end of the train. He doesn't wait to take the shot. All noise is drown out by three bolts of light striking the moving figure, which immediately slumps to the ground.

<<Tango down on the far end. Get up here. Watch your angles.>>

[Jet Almeara]

Jet is quick to follow Taaru into the train, gaze already sweeping the sparse interior for hidden corners or hidey holes where delinquents with weapons might be waiting to ambush them though she reached the same conclusion Taaru had - nothing inside seemed to offer enough cover for such a thing and nothing moved to hint otherwise.

"Check the body?" She questioned though to be honest she wasn't sure if it was worthwhile, they might have just a shot a ruffian hiding from the drone as far as she knew..and to be honest she didn't care either way. Casting a suspicious glance back into the tunnel she pushed the door shut again, the noise might have drawn some attention to them.

[Taaru Masako]

<<Cover me.>>

He holsters his rifle on his dorsal mag plate and draws his side arm. A train was a tight fit for someone in powered armor, and a rifle made snap turns look more like graceful pirouettes. That's because they were, and they didn't do much good when someone already had a bead on you.

He approaches the body, sidearm at the ready. The light amplification has no color resolution, everything is bathed in lime green light. But he can tell that whatever it is, it isn't wearing any sort of military protective hardware....and its small.

He nudges the body over with a foot. The boy couldn't be more than fourteen or fifteen years old. In his hand is an old cartridge blaster.... an heirloom, judging by the carved ivory holster.

The deep breath he takes is audible over their shared comm channel. He slowly holsters his gun again.

<<Clear>> he says, the strap on his thigh holster securing itself with a click. His tone is emotionless, only really betraying one thing: He wasn't surprised at all.....as if this wasn't the first time.

[Jet Almeara]

Jet wondered briefly if it made her a bad person when she wasn't all that affected by the kids death, maybe sometime in her early years she might have been a bit more affected by the knowledge that they'd just gunned down a kid...well Taaru and the rookie had..she had to keep reminding herself that this had happened long ago and she wasn't actually here.

Regardless this was a war and these things happened. It might not be nice but no good came from weeping over every unfortunate mistake or mishap that happened - if she'd done that during the vong war Corellia would never have been freed, she was pretty sure that the attack she and Blade had launched through the force had killed more then just a few survivors along with the vong - but it had got the job done and there had been no way to avoid it. Acceptable loss.

The boy was an acceptable loss. Still she wondered if it made her a bad person. The rookie was a bit more distressed over it but Jet had the feeling that she had't been placed in this sort of situation very often - if ever - before, so that was to be expected. She did a good job of keeping most of her distress to herself. "Well damn" She exclaimed when she saw the body.

[Taaru Masako]

<<It's justified.>> he says bleakly. <<The noble houses didn't have to back the Black Prince. But they did, and now their cities and manors lie in ruins. That's how this works.>>

He turns from the boy and slides the door to the next car aside. Beyond it is an even younger child, huddled and frightened, pressing itself so hard against one of the benches as if its willing the walls to swallow it. He just stands there and looks at it.

The Rookie watches as Taaru's hand pops the seal on his thigh holster again, drawing the blaster pistol.

[Jet Almeara]

Stepping over the body they had left behind she watched as Taaru slid open the door to the next compartment her eyes finding the scared little kid. jet was somewhat impassive - sure she didn't like to think about killing kids - she had been a mother and such sentimentalities seemed to be somewhat hardwired in people...but she was also a very firm believer in never leaving a potential enemy behind, allowing hatred and anger to fester until they were capable of revenge.

Grifter had made that mistake and look where that had gotten them all - a goodly portion dead by Damon's hands. There would be allot of anger in a kid who could have possibly just heard an older brother or friend gunned down in front of them, there wasn't very many ways to make that sort of thing up to someone.

The rookie however didn't share Jet's train of thought - she only saw a little kid huddled against the side of the train and nothing else seemed to register. "It's just a kid...is that really necessary?"

[Taaru Masako]

His golden visor turns to her, and while the Rookie experiences this as nothing but slightly menacing, a wave washes over Jet....it's like before, in the lounge of the Chaser, but instead of the distant heat of a brushfire, its the empty, piercing iciness of a dark winter night. She can't see past his visor, but she has fought alongside this man....an incarnation of this man.... in the past.

And she gets the dread sense that he is smiling.

She is reminded of the faceless projection of the demon, its only feature the two, glowing eyes, and the echoes in the depths of a dead city begin to sound like the unfurling of wings.

"Necessary?" he asks, rhetorically. "No...not at all."

And fires.

[Jet Almeara]

"What the hell are you doing?!?" The Rookie yelled, jumping forward with an attempt to knock his arm aside and save the kid, it is probably a futile attempt Jet suspected but at least the rookie had the guts to try it which was more then she'd shown the rest of this incredible buzzkill of a memory.

But Jet wasn't really paying attention to the kid..or the rookie and her rescue attempt - she was far more drawn to the echoes of force that she felt emanating off of Taaru, she wasn't sure how she felt it because up until now she hadn't sensed a lick of anything through the force but she did and she was happy even for this small taste. She even preferred the icy coldness to the burning heat she had felt from him before, Jet liked the cold and the dark and in most instances - preferred it to almost everything else.

But she wasn't sure what this coldness meant and so while the rookie tried to save the kid Jet turned her energy to searching along that cold dark line coming from her friend..because somewhere underneath she sensed the monster from before and if she could only find that beast...then she could perhaps figure out what Taaru's issue was and return to the land of the living, the here and the now.

[Taaru Masako]

Reality blurs as two narratives emerge, the first following the Rookie.

The blaster bolt burns a whole through the paneling of the car, inches above the cowering child, which screams and bolts as the scuffle breaks out.

Taaru, the petty vengeance of lost souls denied to him, lashes out at his tormentor, the full force of his semipowered armor throwing the Rookie across the car. She hits the floor hard and skitters into a row of seats, scrabbling for purchase and her rifle. But before she can find either, Taaru is upon her, knife drawn, grabbing a pull strap on her chest piece and hoisting her partially into the air.

"Du wagst es?" with the greatest venom and rage. <<Who are you?! Where do you think you are?!>>

He pulls, tossing her across the car again, this time into one of the vertical poles serving as a handhold for passengers. Were she in any position to care about details, the Rookie would note that something of this magnitude wasn't entirely feasible with his armor alone...

She rolls onto her back, dazed. Taaru straddles her at the waist, pinning her hands against her chest as she raises them to protect herself. The knife glints in her nightvision, its point at the soft underbody material at her neck.

The paralyzing, animal fear of thousands of years of human evolution courses through her: It doesn't matter that, somewhere, her rational mind knows she's wearing a suit of armor.

Taaru's visor is inches from hers, the comms doing nothing to mask the menace in his voice.

<<You don't deny me anything. You don't tell me what to do. You're in the wrong goddamn place at the wrong goddamn time. I take what I want, rook. And you may not have anything I want right now, but don't think FOR A SECOND I won't find something. VERSTEHST DU?!"

[...]

Elsewhere....

The cold that Jet first experiences as familiar quickly becomes alien. It is an unbearable cold, the kind that freezes to the bone. It is the cold of absence, of a void, sucking all warmth down into it. Jet steps through its gateway...

... A sudden rush of emotion, images she can't parse. Her heart seizes in her chest as torrents of abject despair, frustration, anger, terror, hatred - a cacophony of human suffering and atrocity - wash over her in screaming waves. It is the litany of rent souls, tearing at her in a desperate bid for solace, destroying what is desired above all things. She looks to her left and can see the Rookie, her terror becoming Jet's. She looks up, and sees the Demon, inky claw closed around her neck, white eyes blazing. It spreads its wings, casting a shroud over all of them...reflected in them are the hell blown, wartorn landscapes of countless worlds.

It has no mouth, but it speaks, with the rumble of a crypt door closing, and the certainty of the Ultimate Reality.

LEAVE.

[Jet Almeara]

For a few moments Jet is caught within the drama unfolding for the rookie and the sheer act of finding herself attacked makes her instinctively want to fight back - but she reminds herself after a few angry moments that it isn't the fight she wants at the moment...whatever memory Taaru is playing back and whatever happened in this long ago time isn't what interests her at the moment though she senses in him the desperate soul sucking anger that had engulfed her for a good period of time after the invasion. She remembers the vicious and rash acts that she had taken part in while freeing Corellia and she understands, the loss and the anger and the desperation and everything it can do to a person. What it had done to her and what she could see it had done to Taaru. She wasn't sure if either of them had come out of their situations as better people the way survivors tended to do in legends and stories but then Jet had found that legends and stories were generally full of crap anyways. Life wasn't a story - life was just one big ocean of hell.

That thought made the cold reaching out to her even more inviting, the cold froze and numbed and made everything bearable again - perhaps that was way she found it so easy to work with, she was a frozen wasteland inside - different..but similar enough to the burning land of ashes that she had been reminded of in Taaru earlier. They were both Wastelands.

And into the wasteland she went, becoming caught up in the whirling emotional maelstrom and it brings her to her knees, threatens to overwhelm her and send her reeling into the cold black along with the rest of the wailing souls, the rookie is terrified, she has sensed somehow that there is more to Taaru at this moment then she had first thought, that he is different and broken, She screams but Jet has already left her behind, the inky shadow spreading over her has drawn her attention upwards - the monster from earlier, the demon that she suspects to be the root cause of it all. It's claws are around her neck and her position speaks of failure, of loss and maybe somewhere a part of her wants to cry - though she isn't sure if it is from fear or from relief at the thought of death.

But that is a new part of Jet, a less ingrained, less learned reaction and underneath this relatively newly forged despair of continuing to live is older lessons, stronger lessons and they assert themselves with the stubborness that had caused them to b beat into her in the first place. She wasn't dead..she hadn't failed and until she was or until the new despair succeeded in eating them away - she'd Keep on fighting.

"No" She told the demon, fixing the beast with a look of her own, green eyes bleeding pale blue as they did when she drew heavily on the force - though she was unaware of the happening as the action was absent the rush of force powers such a change typically preceded

[Taaru Masako]

The Rookie nods instinctively, the threat of violence and violation thrusting her towards appeasement.

Taaru's grip on her arm bracers loosens as the tension in him slowly uncoils. He stands, sheathing the knife and fetching her rifle. He ejects the magazine and stores it, then wraps his ornate crushgaunt around the barrel and bends it into a U. If she had any ideas about the established balance of power, she'd have to come at him with her only sidearm, her knife..... and considering his proven proficiency with his, this would be a desperate gambit.

He tosses the useless weapon at her feet. She was defenseless, in an incredibly hostile environment. This was by design.... she could strike out on her own and most certainly meet the fate that most of the other loyalist forces had met in the city.... or she could follow him. He still needed her, but he wasn't going to drag her kicking and screaming.

<<We get to the telecomm tower. You do exactly what I say when I say it, and you may make it.>>

He turns, retrieving his own rifle, and starts making progress down the length of the car in the direction they'd been heading before.



The Demon's eyes narrow. It is either unaware of the change in hers, or fails to be disconcerted.

SO BE IT.

Its grip around her neck tightens.

[Jet Almeara]

It was very strange to be playing through this in almost double vision, on one hand she could still see and feel the dismay and anger - doed with a healthy bit of fear - from the rookie as Taaru made things perfectly clear and while Jet had certainly seen some off that coming she had to frown a bit at Taaru's methodology ..the rookie hadn't posed much of a threat to him armed...but she might have been useful against others..and he'd ruined a perfectly good weapon in the process of it all....but it was hard to pay much attention to the rookie, Jet was aware that the stunned and frightened women had stooped to retrieve the power cartridge from her otherwise ruined weapon and then followed after the advancing Taaru because frankly..what else could she do?

But all of that was information Jet processed in a peripheral manner, she was far to preoccupied with the claws tightening around her neck and the demons narrowed gaze. Jet despised being helpless,powerless...and afraid of what might happen to her, she was a control freak not by choice but by her very nature, Grifter had noticed that aspect in her and interred it even deeper, while many force users relied on pure blunt force Jet used only what was necessary in a very exacting fashion, controlled, precise...perfect.

But such things didn't do her any good when circumstances were stripped out of her control, that just made her angry and while she sensed that she ought to be coursing with the blazing energy of the force at this moment she felt nothing - because she was trapped in Taarus mind fighting what she assumed to be Taaru's demon in a fractured and broken memory and she wasn't exactly sure just how she could deal with it. reaching up she grabbed the demons hands and tried to peel the talons from her throat "Taaru" She gasped "TAARU!" She yelled..because this was his mind and his memory and his demon and she sensed that perhaps he somehow could help her..and just in case she really did have some force in her - even if she couldn't feel it here, now..she none the less envisioned an outreaching of sorts, she had control but couldn't use it and he had power here but frayed control, but perhaps together...two halves could make a usable whole

[Taaru Masako]

Taaru's retreating back wavers in Jet's vision. The reality she had just inhabited begins to peel back at the edges, distending and warping, as if something immediately beneath it is trying to break through.

The Demon's eyes widen in realization.

YOU KNOW NOT WHAT YOU DO.

Searing white light explodes around them, its rays silhouetting the inky blackness of the Demon's folded wings and torso. Distracted, the monster turns as if to face another presence, its grip around her neck giving way. The light emanates from another figure, standing in the car. The Demon attacks it, and both struggle briefly, before finality unfurls and Jet, no longer a player in the memory, is cast out.

Jet's vision comes into focus again, a familiar HUD with golden accents in front of her. Noise and blasterfire filter through the helmet's speakers.

She sees Taaru huddled next to her, both of them taking cover behind the centerpiece of a dry fountain in a public square.

<<I'm going to draw its fire. Wait for my signal, then make a dash for the entrance.>>

Taaru peaks his head around the ornate statue depicting a founder of one of Serenno's noble houses, its features melted and dimpled by new and old blaster scouring. A hunter-killer droid, its turbofans wailing, continues to pepper the area, as it cautiously advances on their position.

Taaru sprint from cover, firing at the droid. Tracers of responding blaster fire trail him, biting at his heels.

Over the comm: <<GO! NOW!>>

[Jet Almeara]

"Then stop trying to kill me and explain things!" Jet gasped at the demon as it began to look worried. Unfortunately whatever she had done distracted it from answering her - she wasn't even completely sure that it had heard her. But it had loosened its grip and turned away - something she was glad of even if she still had no idea just how she was going to help Taaru.

She hardly got a glimpse of the second presence - whatever it was she had somehow called into action before reality started to fray and while she tried to hold on so that she could find out what was really happening she found herself thrown out and plunged back into the rookies body.

Somehow it seemed like she had jumped ahead a bit in the memory and they were now crouching behind some cover while underfire. Great. Thanks for wreaking my weapon, Jet thought bitterly as she sat helplessly in the din of laserfire. At least he seemed capable of taking care of things without her help and with his prompting she made a dash for the entrance.