The Force will guide you where you least expect it...

The low, gentle voice of her former master echoed in her mind as faint and distant as the years behind her. Though it had been some time since he had last spoken to her, it was a reassuring lesson to dwell on as she carefully stepped around haphazard debris and disintegrating floors in the deafening silence.

...be open to its call. A Jedi's duty is rarely so perfectly outlined...

She had followed...a feeling, a familiar pull on a winding, meandering journey for most of the morning, much to her companion's chagrin. It had taken them from the casual, comfortable walkways of Coruscant's Upper Levels to these forgotten, skeletal frames decaying for centuries in the darkness below. Portions of the Underlevels were sealed and restricted from public access for obvious safety reasons, but like the creatures that sought refuge from the city-planet's crowded surface and constantly scurried under her feet, she had managed to skirt their barricades easily enough. Broken glowlamps on the walls flickered intermittently and provided little useful light; it was the bioluminescent lifeforms, clustered together in small mounds atop the stablest of debris piles, that illuminated their surroundings and allowed her to navigate the area.

Eventually she felt as though she were floating as the Force drew her forward through the broken levels, her steps lighter than raindrops as she moved at its insistence without much thought. She had almost reached a meditative state, completely surrendering herself to the Force and what it was asking of her, for it neither told her its will outright nor gave her any instructions. Though she'd wanted nothing but to turn her heart against it after the terrible hardships and pain it had brought her throughout her lengthy life, its familiar call tugged at her relentlessly until she could no longer ignore it. Urgency had awakened her and ushered her to her feet from Derek's side that morning, and she'd had difficulty finding the right words to explain it to him, merely dragging him along. She'd felt such a call only once before years ago on Corellia, and she had almost ignored it then. Was the same person behind this call, too?

Behind her, Derek's thundering footfalls as he trailed after her her made the entire structure shudder and shower them both in dust and grime, briefly distracting her.

"This sector's been crumbling for decades, Saki," Derek grumbled, carelessly shrugging a sizable chunk of debris off his broad shoulder. "We should leave."

Sakiko shook her head at him with determined grace. "Not until I find it."

Derek only offered a gruff grunt in response, expressing his displeasure without words yet no longer continuing to argue with her. It made her grin as she turned her back to him once more; he was learning well.

With an elegant sweep of her hand, she tucked a stray strand of her long brown-blue hair behind her slender, pointed Loreean ear. There was no breeze among the yawning caverns and layers of rubble, adding an even more ominous air to the stale, empty atmosphere, but something, perhaps the Force itself, had moved it out of place. Though she had studied it since she was a small girl, it was such a mysterious power; surely it could occasionally be mischievous, too. It had brought her to a place of...nothingness, of lifelessness, for a reason she had yet to grasp, after all. Was it testing her resolve, or was it trying to make a fool of her for her blind faith?

"At least tell me what we're looking for."

Derek's dwindling patience was difficult to counter when she couldn't even give him an acceptable answer. She would know what the Force had summoned her for when she saw it, but how was she to explain that to him, especially when there was nothing to see?

A sudden, rumbling boom grew in intensity and echoed about her, nearly impossible to discern its origin thanks to the extreme variances in the nearby chambers that bounced the sound from all directions. More debris crumbled and fell in response, depositing even larger rubble along cascading slopes and long, deep chasms. Derek swept up to her side in an instant, his incredibly broad frame towering over her and shielding her from harm as he held tightly, but gently, to her shoulders. She appreciated his earnest protection, but she hadn't yet feared for her safety or even flinched amid the destruction. The Force itself kept her completely calm and composed as an even louder crash sounded from just above them, and a male form fell through the ceiling and landed on the floor in a heap among the debris just steps away.

As the dust and the silence slowly settled, Sakiko was nothing but drawn to the fallen victim, inexplicably pulled toward the motionless stranger despite Derek's protests. He refused to relinquish his hold on her even as she stepped away from him, forcing her to address him directly with fierce, pointed words.

"I need to help him."

Derek's eyes narrowed in defiance, prepared to finally take a stand against her stubbornness...but something in her glowing ice blue eyes allayed the fiery determination in his. With another disapproving growl, he released her, though he kept tightly on her heels as she made her way toward the other.

Though he was laying on his left side and covered in dust and a few stray bits of debris, Sakiko could tell the man was human and was actually quite young, no older than twenty. He had begun to faintly moan and cough as she knelt beside him, rolling off his side onto his back with weak effort. His face contorted in pain as he moved, but she patiently awaited his full return to consciousness before she made her presence known.

With a few more pained breaths, his eyes began to slowly open, taking in his dim surroundings. He seemed to struggle to focus momentarily, but as his gaze found her at his side, fear clearly registered in his expression. She kept her movements minimal and her voice as gentle as possible.

"Easy, there... I'm not here to harm you."

His eyes locked with hers as his panic eventually calmed, appearing to find something familiar about her that put him at ease. He scanned her face with intent, tracking all around it from her hair to her ears back to her eyes, and strangely enough, she was beginning to think him familiar, too...

"Are..." he struggled, his voice rough, "...are you Sakiko?"