Chapter 28

Lightning split the sky, bisecting the growing darkness and the brooding, boiling cumulonimbi, pregnant with moisture. The clouds and the onset of night were beginning to plunge all of Felucia into darkness, save for the rampant phosphorescence indicative of whole colonies of fungi, lighting the jungles with random patches of soft illumination below. But atop the precipice where a storm of violence was brewing, nearing the point at which the tension would boil over, the phosphorescent patches of the mushroom grove were overpowered by the hellish glow of the Inquisitor's lightsaber as she spun it through a ready arc in a threat display. The Dark Troopers, Terror Troopers, and Purge Trooper had all primed their weapons, and there were enough blasters aimed at their quarry that any move on their part would be met with hails of blasterfire from two or more sources. Not that Foyi, Rayf, or Vaevi could move much at all, with the lip of the ledge mere centimeters from their heels and the scattered grove of fungal stalks atop the ridge limiting their maneuverability beyond what was practical for a fight.

Foyi cast a glance at her companions, then at her surroundings, memorizing the layout of the field upon which she was certain battle would commence. She tried not to let her gaze wander too far from the Inquisitor, who began to take careful steps forward, her scarlet blade held before her. Foyi would have to keep the Devaronian in sight at all times, for she was the only combatant here whom she could not actively sense in the Force. Thus, if it came to combat, she would not be able to anticipate her movements and her attacks; it would probably be best to try and keep the Inquisitor at range if at all possible. But then Foyi remembered her observed ability to produce Force lightning from her fingertips, and the Zeison Sha belatedly wondered how she might be able to defend against such an assault.

Vaevi tensed beside her, most likely trying to determine if she dared to fire a blaster bolt at the Inquisitor. But it was Rayf who made the first move, stepping forward slowly, slipping the Pulse Rifle across his back and walking past his wan-shen, which still stood upright from where it had been planted in the mud and moss. His expression was indecipherable, but he had eyes only for the Devaronian woman. "Vinaq? Is that you?"

The Devaronian halted midstep, letting the blade of her weapon drop toward the stone at her feet. She stared intently at Rayf, and her severe expression became another sneer. "Thame...Mirac, wasn't it? I wondered if that was you. Honestly, I'm not certain I would've recognized you if you hadn't said anything."

Rayf ignored the skeptical stares levered his way by his companions as he took another step forward, keeping his hands by his sides and his palms facing forward to show the Inquisitor his lack of weaponry. "It's been a long time. I can forgive a little slip of the memory."

The Devaronian known as Vinaq gave a snide smile. "How long has it been, Thame? Another lifetime, certainly, since I watched you leaving the Temple in shame. I remember feeling a mixture of pity for your failure, and relief that I had not shared in it. Though knowing what I know now, I wonder if I shouldn't have left that day as well, and thus avoid the years of the Jedi's hypocrisy I suffered under."

Rayf's eyebrow rose as the only external indication of his mood, but Foyi could feel his emotions filtering from him through the Force, a mixture of sadness and determination as he looked upon the Inquisitor before him. Whomever this woman had been when Rayf had known her was alien to the creature that stood before him now, and Rayf felt so despondent about this unwelcome revelation, Foyi's own feelings ached for him. "And you find no hypocrisy amongst the ranks of the Empire?"

Vinaq's crimson blade was a blur of light as it came up into a ready position again, forcing Rayf to halt his slow progress toward her. "I never said there wasn't. But the Empire does not bother with claiming to be things it isn't. It stands for peace, justice, and security in the galaxy, and accomplishes this by any means necessary, while the Emperor has the presence of mind to not be ashamed of the actions he takes that are necessary. There are members who find deception and secrecy more appealing than the New Order's tenets, but that's why people like myself exist. To find traitors in the ranks." Her blade lowered, an accusatory finger leveled toward the trio before her. "And enemies of the Empire."

Now Rayf let the pain he was feeling show on his face in a sad grimace. "You don't see it, do you, Vinaq? You don't see how far you've fallen, how deep into the dark you tread. I still remember your goals, back in the Katarn Clan, to root out proponents of the Dark Side, to become one with the Force, at its beck and call as assuredly as it was at yours. We shared those goals, Vinaq-"

"If not our talents," Vinaq replied acidly. "You pine for the foul, stagnant days of the Old Republic and the stiff, dogmatic propaganda of the Jedi. For days of childish dreams and uneducated desires. Your failure to pass the Initiate Trials kept you from being further indoctrinated into their ideals of base pacifism and inaction, burdened with a Code preaching tolerance, unity, and nonviolence. But then the Clone Wars came, and opened my eyes to the lies of the Jedi, as they willingly became harbingers of war, death, and destruction, all in the name of peace and justice." Her smile became vicious as her expression sharpened. "They preached and demanded adherence to their philosophy, but when the position of authority and respect they had held for far too long was threatened, they fought with everything they could to maintain their power, even attempting to assassinate their rightful, elected Emperor in a last-ditch effort to maintain the power afforded them." Her voice had become a heated snarl now, and Foyi found it disconcerting to see such rage contorting her features and yet feel none of it through the Force. "They raised us, took advantage of our powers to shape us into their own Light Side-worshiping drones, telling us to think for ourselves and deciding what we should think. They told us to live our lives in peace and serenity, and then handed us weapons with the ability to slice through armor, muscle, and bone with hardly an effort on the part of the wielder. And then they took the younglings they so valued as the future of peace and justice in the galaxy and threw them into warzones, leading humans born from formulas and templates to serve as expendable dejarik pieces thrown across the galaxy. For all their ideals regarding the sanctity of life and the purveyance of peace, they willingly became wanton agents of death and war wherever they went. The galaxy could not survive their hypocrisy any longer, for they had sickened of it long ago. Do you see the rest of the galaxy sharing your fantasies of the past and a return of the Jedi?'

Vinaq stepped closer to Rayf, her expression insistent now. "And all that time, they had the capability to use the Force to its full potential. They had the ability to gain absolute power, and to hold onto it indefinitely, and yet they blinded themselves to the opportunities open only to them. They could have achieved all that they claimed to uphold, if only they had not been too terrified and weak to attain the necessary power to maintain security in this galaxy of war and chaos. The Emperor and the society he has built holds no such compunctions. The Force is limitless energy, Thame, and we were granted the gift of knowing it intimately, of drawing upon and wielding that energy as we see fit. Why limit ourselves as the Jedi once did? Why learn only one aspect of the Force defined by tradition and politics so ancient they have bearing no longer on the modern age? The Jedi deemed you a failure, your sensitivity to the Force so weak you were not worth the time required of them to take from their busy days of meditation, contemplation, and dancing with training remotes. And yet you stand before me and I can feel the Force flowing through you. You are stronger now than you ever were before, but you have yet to realize your potential." She lowered her hissing, droning blade and extended her empty hand in offering. "We need not be enemies. None of us. I came to this world to discover Force-sensitives who were tired of the limits placed upon them by themselves or others, to become all they were meant to be, to serve justice and order in this galaxy. To make the reality in which we live a better place for ourselves and others. And here I find not only an old friend, but another gifted with the Force accompanying him. The Force has thus led us all here, to this moment, and I believe this is an opportunity none of us can pass up."

Foyi opened her mouth to respond negatively, but it was Rayf who answered the Inquisitor first, his voice pained. "We're not here to discuss whether the Jedi were right or wrong, or the Clone Wars, or your delusional and sycophantic view of Palpatine and his monstrous regime. And none of us are here on this diseased and wounded world to survive some gauntlet in the hopes of gaining more power in the Force. Vinaq, there's a killer somewhere in these woods, a monster who kidnaps innocents and uses them for his own perverse pleasures. One of our own was kidnapped by him, and is in grave danger, and so we have come to save the younglings from him. You're right, we don't need to be enemies. If you truly believe in everything in your monologue here, you'll join with us in order to find justice for his victims, to bring the Empire's purported security and civility to this wild and untamed corner of the galaxy. Every moment we delay here is another moment that those we wish to rescue from abject cruelty are left in danger." He opened his hands wider in an imploring gesture. "Please, Vinaq. We were friends once. I don't agree with much of what you say, and your attire suggests you fulfill a role within the Empire that requires actions of you I would definitely take issue with. But we share a common background, and at one time, we shared goals as well. Let us share another goal now, or let us pass, and forget our misunderstandings."

Foyi tightened her grip on the disruptor rifle, keeping it trained on the Inquisitor, though she doubted the effectiveness of an energy weapon against an opponent trained with a blade that was capable of reflecting such attacks back on the shooter. She removed one of her hands and dropped it to her belt, where she had tucked her discblade. Vaevi kept her sniper rifle similarly trained, sweat trickling down her throat and the tip of her nose. Both Twi'lek and Iktotchi's gaze were sliding back and forth between Rayf and Vinaq, while the group of troopers and droids shifted anxiously, practically yearning for open bloodshed. Foyi's eyes rested on the Inquisitor, and in the bloody wash from her blade, she could see her features kept neutral, but her eyes betrayed her consideration. She seemed to actually be weighing her options, one of which was allying, even temporarily, with the trio before her.

Thunder crackled over their heads, and the skies split with lightning and the ringing, echoing chorus of the heavens. Rain began to fall, first in obese drops of slimy water that splattered infrequently upon the bodies and garments of those gathered below. But within moments, the rain grew in intensity, the growling winds lashing them with great sheets of moisture. Yet the storm did nothing to abate the tension between the two groups, and not a one of those gathered on the precipice dared look away long enough to glance up at the storm unleashing its fury upon them, their faces lit infrequently by blue and white flashes competing for illumination with the glowing fungi and the garish sanguine glow of Vinaq's lightsaber.

The Inquisitor tightened her grip on her lightsaber almost imperceptibly, her muscles tensing beneath her armor and her robes. She was within easy striking distance of Rayf, a fact that both of them were intimately aware of. When she next spoke, her words were as cold as the vacuum of space. "We may have history together, Thame, but it may surprise you to find that I never thought much of you in the first place. You rely upon a friendship that could barely be called that to convince us to help you or let you go. And I thought myself audacious. We don't need to be enemies, but you do not get to dictate the terms of whatever relationship we might have from here on out." She gestured at him with her lightsaber, the blade passing mere centimeters in front of his face, though Rayf did not flinch. "You have all committed crimes against the Empire, including but not limited to the vandalism of Imperial military materiel, aggravated assault and attempted murder of Imperial personnel, and resisting arrest. If you don't lay down your weapons this instant, you shall be labeled fugitives, and dealt with harshly and accordingly."

Rayf, the lightsaber still shimmering before his eyes, exhaled an aggrieved sigh. "Vinaq...there are younglings in danger. Younglings we can help. You can help. We're wasting time here."

"I can sense that you truly believe what you are saying, though that doesn't mean it isn't a lie or misinformation," came Vinaq's quiet response. "I have had no reports regarding such an individual as you describe, nor evidence that there is anything of note on this world that isn't within the view of the Empire. Even if what you say is so, none of that is my mission, and I cannot ignore my duty to complete the mission given me. Neither can I allow malcontents and fugitives to range free. This is your last chance, Thame; yours and your friends. Surrender peacefully, or face the consequences."

Foyi had heard enough. Refusing to wait for their enemies to make the first move, she gathered the Force about her in a sudden tidal wave of energy and shoved her left hand toward her companions. The rain-lashed atmosphere billowed from her open palm, throwing both Vaevi and Rayf to the side, away from the cliff edge and toward the thicket of mushrooms. As she did this, she tucked into a roll that gained her space from both the edge and the Inquisitor, and somersaulted to one knee, where she swung her disruptor rifle at the troopers on the lower end of the clifftop. She fired a pair of blasts, and brilliant emerald explosions tore through their ranks, reducing one of the Dark Troopers to little more than sparking shrapnel that impacted several of its fellows, and blasting the legs out from another Dark Trooper, sending it falling to its back, where its rolling momentum surrendered to gravity and sent it tumbling back down the far slopes of the cliff. But even as she drew a bead on the slinking, hunched troopers in the ghastly masks, they began disappearing from view, as if ceasing to exist, leaving her nothing to aim at, save for the Dark Troopers and the towering, dark-armored droid now thundering toward her, its shoulder-mounted missile launcher tracking the Twi'lek it had selected as its target.

Foyi's danger sense shrieked at her, and she tucked into another roll with no particular direction in mind, as long as it carried her away from the imminent attack and not send her rolling from the ledge. A staccato burst of laserfire passed through the air where she had been a second before, and she sprang to her feet again after fetching up against the bole of one of the large mushrooms straddling the top of the cliff. She braced herself against the sturdy trunk of fungus at her back and fired a retaliatory burst, the blast of green energy lancing through the rain and striking the last of the Dark Troopers that remained standing at its feet. The Dark Trooper gave a digitized groan as its legs were blown out from underneath it, flipping the enormous carapace of the droid to the side, where it bounced, rolled, and met the edge of the cliff. The torso disappeared over the ledge, but the quick reflexes of its right arm dug into the mud and moldy carpet atop the ledge, arresting its fall though leaving it in a tenuous position.

Foyi only remained before the mushroom for a moment, rolling to the side again as the Inquisitor whirled on her and stretched out her left hand, the appendage not currently holding her lightsaber. Foyi could not feel her opponent calling upon the Force, but she could feel the coldest waters erupting through the surface of the vast ocean, and a blinding bolt of lightning was ejected from her fingertips. The lightning passed within millimeters of Foyi's flailing tchin as she rolled away, and impacted the mushroom stalk, flash-heating the slimy surface and causing it to explode in a spray of water droplets and gobs of slime. Foyi came up to one knee, bringing her disruptor rifle to her shoulder, but she felt the Force whirl about her as a telekinetic hand reached out to grip the end of her weapon and rip it free of her slippery hands. Before Foyi could bring her own telekinesis to bear, the disruptor rifle was already spinning end over end through the air, soaring over the lip of the precipice and into the darkness of the rainy jungle far below, and Vinaq was sprinting toward her, the Force allowing her to close the intervening distance between them in the blink of an eye. Foyi saw a flare of brilliant scarlet curving down toward her and reacted on instinct, her hands reaching out to send a frenzied push through the Force. Likely, the Inquisitor was prepared for such an attack, but not its desperation and ferocity, and she gave a shout as she flew bodily through the air to slam against another mushroom stalk hard enough for her armor to clack loudly.

Foyi's hand flashed down to her belt, and it came away with a spray of rain, gripping her discblade. She cocked her hand back to let loose a deadly throw of the weapon, but the breath was blown out of her lungs as something struck her in the back, sending an inferno of pain arcing along all her nerves, followed closely by a horrifying paralysis she had experienced only once before, at the hands of Sable Dawn assassins and their stun blasters. Her body refused to obey her commands, and she found herself falling on her back, her limbs writhing, her muscles bunching and warping in convulsions. She only maintained her grip on her discblade because her fingers locked around its hilt, though she would not have been able to throw it anyway. Her vision undulated and swam, as though she had been plunged underwater, and she could not draw proper breath into her lungs, no matter how hard she tried.

Foyi called out to the Force, trying to reach out to the waters that calmed and soothed and strengthened her, but she was unable to fight through the alternating periods of pain and lack of sensation. It was so difficult to think, or even see properly, but she was aware enough to see one of the lurking Imperial forms looming over her, the Terror Trooper materializing as if from the air itself, raising one of his gloved hands above his head. His fingers flashed with the razor-sharp blades he aimed to plunge into her unprotected throat and sternum.

Foyi could barely comprehend how close she was to death before the blades flashed down, only for something metallic to appear millimeters from her nose and intercept the hand, whipping through the trooper's wrist and sending the severed appendage spinning away into the darkness, blades and all. The wheezing Terror Trooper had enough time to let out a surprised squeak when another arc of metal darted in from the side of the Twi'lek's vision, and she suddenly realized she was looking at Rayf's wan-shen, the blade affixed to the end sunk all the way to the shaft in the lightly-armored throat of the trooper. A mere heartbeat from when the blade first entered the trooper's throat, it pulled itself free, and with it came a spray of blood as the Imperial soldier collapsed, falling heavily beside Foyi, the trooper's amputated wrist falling upon Foyi's abdomen hard enough to send a jolt of pain through her.

But that pain allowed her to find the focus she had been looking for, the jolt back to reality she needed to fight the effects of the stun blast. She found the Force again, meekly answering her call, but coming to her aid with a flood of power that allowed her to still the convulsions in her limbs sufficient to roll over on her side. For it was from there she heard a crackling sound, a screeching of metal accompanied by a whine of energy as the ledge was painted in sweeping red flashes. She blinked away rainwater and stupefaction in order to see two figures darting forward and back in a lethal dance of blades, one at the end of a lengthy polearm where even the blunt end was being used as rapidly as the darting blade at the opposite end, the other a meter-length of shivering crimson plasma. It took her a second that stretched to an eternity to recognize the figures as Rayf and Inquisitor Vinaq, twirling and dodging, jumping from side to side or narrowly avoiding sweeps from each others blades. She had seen Rayf fight before, the way in which he plied his Matukai training his his martial arts skills to become a whirling dervish of deadly motion. But she had yet to see him duel with an opponent who could meet him face to face with matching skill and ferocity. What little Foyi could actually perceive of the combatants revealed Rayf to be the quicker of the two, his movements precise and blurred with their speed. He wielded his wan-shen in a two-handed grip, swinging the weapon in great sweeps and slashes to bring the blade in line with various vital areas on the Devaronian, aimed for gaps in her armor or places on her body that were not as well protected.

But the Inquisitor was a force to be reckoned with on her own. Her motions were more subtle and rarely required her to move more than a few centimeters at a time, but her feet were constantly flashing across the ground, repositioning her entire body and stance with each alteration between offense and defense. Sometimes, she gripped her lightsaber in both hands to accept particularly powerful blows from the Matukai Adept, stopping them just before the blade could cut deep into a weak point on her armored form. Her lightsaber flared as it contacted the Force-imbued phrik alloy of the wan-shen, but she would not allow the longer reach of Rayf's weapon to keep her from pressing the assault when she saw an opportunity. Most of these she created for herself, for she would slide her red blade along the length of his wan-shen, forcing Rayf to disengage, lest the length of plasma cut deep into his fingers. Other times, she would wield the lightsaber in a single hand, allowing her to send her weapon into fanciful twirls, pirouettes, and spins that were more for diversionary tactics, attempting to discomfit Rayf, and then pressing the attack with a vicious series of stabs and heavy slashes coming from every conceivable direction. She was not as fast as Rayf was, but her defense was impeccable, her lightsaber always there just in time to intercept Rayf's counters or attacks, sometimes merely turning the wan-shen's blade just a centimeter or two to the right or left, so that his attack met only empty air and falling rain. And she never let an attack go unanswered, for when she would block or riposte, she would bring her free hand back to the hilt of her lightsaber and try to overpower Rayf with heavy-handed chops, stabs, and slashes. And when Rayf intercepted or dodged away from these, she would switch to a single-handed grip again and use her free hand for a telekinetic shove or a short burst of devastating Force lightning.

Foyi struggled to her elbows and knees, her fingers finally starting to release from their death grip on her discblade. Another crackling stun blast whizzed past her head, close enough her tchun went numb and started to quiver, but she barely registered it, focusing on trying to regain her momentum. Blasterfire rang out above the sound of the wind, pouring rain, and grumbling thunder, and the body of another Terror Trooper splashed in the wet mold beside her. She instinctively rolled away from it, which became more like the flopping of a burra fish out of water. She sensed another presence beside her, and awkwardly came to her knees, her discblade held at the ready, but her wavering vision focused on the strained and grim face of Vaevi. The bounty hunter splashed to the Twi'lek's side and roughly hauled her back to her spasming legs with one arm, while she swept her aim over the clifftop, looking for the cloaked Terror Troopers still lurking somewhere out of sight on the ledge. "You alright?" she hissed, barely perceptible over the rain and clash of melee weapons in the furious duel a little over a meter away from them.

Foyi felt a cold splash of awareness against her own, and she used the hand she had wrapped about Vaevi's shoulders to shove her back to the cliff's surface, letting herself fall more than throwing herself down with the bounty hunter. A pair of stun blasts whipped through the space the two women had occupied, and Foyi caught flickers of corporeality denoting the origins of the blasts. Foyi was still too unsteady to act upon those sights yet, but Vaevi was not so impaired, raising her heavy blaster pistol from where she had fallen and firing a flurry of bolts. Two of those bolts found one of the Terror Troopers, seemingly exploding in midair before the Imperial's cloaking device shorted out, and his body fell to the clifftop's surface, smoldering holes burrowed deep in his armor. Another pair of bolts found a second Terror Trooper, but these merely sparked off the pauldrons and vambraces of one of the trooper's arms, dropping his cloak for a second before it compensated for his sudden, darting movements and the superficial damage inflicted upon his armor. She anticipated his movements based on her fleeting glimpse of him and fired several more shots, but the bolts had no effect, passing through the air without hitting anything. Another stun blast emerged from midair, but both Vaevi and Foyi were ready for it, rolling away so that the blast splashed harmlessly against the ground.

Foyi opened herself to the Force completely again, drawing upon its power and letting its energy rid the remaining effects of the low-level stun blast from her nerves and musculature. She pushed off the mud and mold-slicked stone and forced herself upright, just in time to arc her spine backward just as another stun blast aimed for her torso whipped past her abdomen. She threw waves of consciousness out from herself, searching for the presences within the Force that would denote the location of the Terror Troopers. Those waves broke against the dim lights of their twisted, tainted presences, as though they were creatures that had once been sentient beings, and had devolved into little more than constructs of instinct and primal rage. She felt one of the presences repositioning itself near the edge of the cliff, attempting to gain a flanking position from which he could sprint across the precipice's surface and sink his bladed fingers into hers or Vaevi's side. Foyi centered her attention on the presence she could not see with her eyes but could feel so clearly, it was as though she were touching him directly. She reached out with a telekinetic grasp that enclosed the invisible Terror Trooper, and with a shove that strained her concentration, threw him free of the cliff. The Terror Trooper gave a shriek of surprise and horror as he hurtled in freefall, and though she heard the sound of his own terror, his cloaking device functioned perfectly, and so she never actually saw him fall.

Foyi and Vaevi stayed close to each other, not straying far from the other and attempting to remain back to back, so that the Terror Troopers could not sneak up and stab them in their spines and vital organs. Foyi continued to stretch out with the Force to catch glimpses of their presences as they darted back and forth across the clifftop, trying to attack from different angles, either firing from range with their stun blasters, or sprinting toward them with their talons outstretched. Foyi sensed one of the latter rushing toward her from her right side and she flipped her discblade around, letting it fly loose from her hand in an upward arc that came crashing down on the approaching enemy, causing his cloaking device to falter as the whirling, curved blades of the Force-imbued weapon chewed their way through the thin armor at his collar, eliciting a spray of blood and a wheezing screech that became little more than a gurgle. The trooper fell forward to the stone, his lifeless body propelled so more by the force of Foyi telekinetically ripping her weapon free of the deep, ragged wounds she had inflicted upon him. Behind her, Vaevi had sheathed her sidearm and drawn her Accelerated Charged Particle Array Gun, discharging expansive blasts of energy at anything that might even remotely be a flicker of cloaking technology. Foyi noticed her shots were aimed to at least land glancing shots, though she had yet to put another Terror Trooper down permanently, and she wondered if the Iktotchi's natural telepathic abilities allowed her to sense the minds of their enemies in much the same way Foyi did using the Force.

Foyi and Vaevi moved as one, never keeping in one place too long, dancing back and forth on the slippery stone and soaked moss at their feet, their erratic footwork, sometimes motivated by Foyi's or even Vaevi's prescient warnings. Stun blasts whistled past them, while Terror Troopers suddenly emerged from their invisibility with swinging blades. One of the troopers appeared at Foyi's side, his talons arcing through the air and catching against her right shoulder. The Twi'lek gave a shriek of both surprise and anguish as the sharpened durasteel edges dug deep grooves into the skin there, ripping the fabric of her jacket and tunic and drawing great, dark beads of blood. She instinctively tore herself away in a clumsy spin, the stun blast's effects still causing her legs to move slowly and weakly, but she willed herself to move and therefore narrowly avoid the blades of the trooper's other hand. Vaevi heard her distress and wheeled around, discharging the last shot in her weapon's current power pack to nearly cut the Terror Trooper in half as his cloaking device began to generate its invisibility field again. The trooper hit the clifftop hard and continued rolling, his remains roiling with black smoke and flecks of dark, slushy gore. The Iktotchi reached to her utility belt for a fresh power pack, and Foyi turned to her in time to see another Terror Trooper emerging from invisibility, both clawed hands stabbing toward the bounty hunter's exposed ribs. Foyi called an unintelligible warning and overextended her arm, angling the discblade so that she trapped those talons in the space between the circular hilt and the encircling blade encompassing it. Having her opponent in a temporarily disadvantageous position, Foyi planted her feet and called the Force to her arm, yanking hard to the right and forcing the Terror Trooper's claws away from both Vaevi and herself. The trooper struggled with her, quickly extricating his talons, but had not the time to bring them to bear once more, for Foyi's other hand came forward as she pulled deeply from the fathomless waters of the Force. Her free hand made a grasping motion and the air warped around them as the invisible extensions of her grip seized the Terror Trooper around the throat. The wheeze heard through the soldier's respirator suddenly hitched as he was no longer able to draw from the air the machinery provided and filtered for him. His taloned hands came to clutch and grasp at his throat as Foyi's splayed fingers drew closer in a pinch, allowing her simmering anger to rise to the fore once more, to augment her power through the Force and the grip she held on the man's throat. With a snarl, she closed her hand into a fist, telekinetically crushing the man's throat. The Terror Trooper convulsed as though he had been shot, and collapsed to the clifftop quivering, unable to draw any air through his ruined esophagus in the last moments of his life.

Foyi gave a gasp herself as she let the anger she had called upon to augment her attack flow away with the tides of the Force, and lowered her arm. Vaevi finished reloading her Scatter Gun and swung it about the precipice's top, looking for more enemies. Which she found immediately in the form of the hulking, mechanical monstrosity that was the Purge Trooper, thundering from the shadows provided by the mushroom grove, its heavy footfalls carrying it toward the two women, while a shimmering blade of lethal energy extended from its left forearm. Vaevi immediately responded, firing a pair of blasts into the droid's chest, but they had little effect against the unnaturally thick armor, and she was almost a second too slow to avoid the first jab of the energy blade from the Purge Trooper. With blinding reflexes, the droid turned that stab into a slash to the side, nearly taking Foyi's head off as she threw herself to the slippery stone in order to evade the sweep. She was still scrambling to get back up when the Purge Trooper took a step forward, and raised its other foot to slam down on her. Foyi rolled a nanosecond before the foot came down with an earsplitting crack as the heavy appendage left a deep impression in the mud, moss, and stone. The Twi'lek kept rolling until she slammed herself against another hoary mushroom trunk, using its solidity as a support to bring herself back to her feet. She reached out with her free hand again as she brought her telekinetic abilities to bear, attempting to grip the Purge Trooper in the Force, to halt its movements or even throw it from the precipice and let Felucia's gravitational pull finish the droid for her. But she found something she could not identify resisting her, as though the Purge Trooper had its own access to the Force and was actively blocking her attempts to manipulate it through telekinesis. The Purge Trooper seemed to be aware of her attempts as it merely quaked, remaining mostly stationary as the Force pulled unsuccessfully upon it, and the droid swiveled toward her. The Purge Trooper ignored the continued assault of the bounty hunter and triggered its missile launcher; a warhead wreathed in blue flame and energy streaked across the intervening space, and Foyi squeaked in fear and surprise as she threw herself forward again. The mushroom exploded in a wash of flame and spores as the missile decimated the fungal stalk, sending the cap of the mushroom pinwheeling skyward and splattering her with chunks of fungal flesh and gouts of ichor. Some of the slime splashed the open wounds upon her shoulder, and she hissed in shock as pain arced through her arm and down through her side. The Twi'lek scrambled to her feet and hurled her discblade, barely requiring any mental concentration to send the thrown weapon at her enemy as she continued sprinting across the clifftop, chased by another pair of missiles. Her discblade whirled in from the side and caught the Purge Trooper just below its immense helmet; the curved blades found something vulnerable, for the immense droid gave a digitized squawk as sparks splashed from just beneath its helmet. At the same time, Vaevi's continued assault put carbon scoring and minor, steaming fractures in the droid's armor, and the Purge Trooper jerked and convulsed as it fell to its knees.

Foyi called her discblade back to her waiting palm, jammed it in the holster on her back, and as she extricated her hand from behind her, pulled her A295 Blaster Rifle with the same motion. She brought the weapon to her shoulder and flipped the fire selector to full autofire, unleashing a fusillade of lasers into the kneeling Purge Trooper, aiming for anything that might be a vital spot.

The droid accepted the first few lasers and another blast from Vaevi's ACP Scatter Gun with hardly a reaction, but it suddenly pushed off the clifftop's surface and came to its feet again. Even as it did so, its right arm swept back and clobbered Vaevi as she reached for another power pack for her empty weapon, sending the bounty hunter rolling heels over head toward the edge. The Purge Trooper then faced Foyi again, and it raised its left arm diagonally before it. The energy blade that had shimmered and sparked from its gauntlet a moment before disappeared, to be replaced by a circular construct of similar energy, which it held in front of it as it began a ponderous stride toward the Zeison Sha. Foyi backed up, heading down the lower edges of the slopes, continuing to keep a steady fire upon the Purge Trooper, but the droid was scanning and anticipating the locations where her bolts would fall, maneuvering its energy shield to intercept the blasterfire, sending many laser blasts spinning off into the rain-soaked darkness, or simply absorbing them. Foyi gritted her teeth and tried to place her shots unpredictably, but the droid maneuvered its shield in the way just in time, or it did not even bother blocking those shots that did little damage to its fantastic armored shell. The droid continued to bleed infrequent sparks from multiple breaches in its armor, but if its combat effectiveness had been compromised, the Twi'lek could not tell.

Foyi decided to attempt a feint, to draw the Purge Trooper into making an ill-conceived assault. She fired another burst of heated plasma to draw the Purge Trooper's shield, then leapt to the side and further down the moist slope, as though she were about to make a run for it and disengage fully from her enemy. The droid took the bait, halting its stride to plant its feet and trigger its missile launcher. Another rocket sped through the rain, arcing down toward her in the blink of an eye, far too quickly for a normal person to react in time to evade the missile's fury. But to Foyi, a Zeison Sha Warrior trained in the Force and having a talent for telekinesis, the missile seemed to be moving excruciatingly slowly through the rain toward her. She peeled her steadying hand from the blaster rifle and caught the missile in a steady Force grip; the missile, its afterburners still raging, quivered in midair for a moment between the Purge Trooper and the Zeison Sha. Foyi flicked her wrist, and the Force imitated the motion, the nudge she sent through its energy field flipping the missile around, so that the trailing afterburners now faced her. Having successfully redirected the projectile, she released her invisible grasp, and the projectile continued its shrieking path through the air, only back to where it had emerged. The Imperial droid was likely recalculating how it might deal with such an unfortuitous change of events when the missile slammed into the launcher from whence it had been birthed and detonated itself and all other ammunition held there. With a blinding flash of light that illuminated the crag as brightly as daylight for a heartbeat, the missile launcher and its payload exploded, melting a deep gouge in the Purge Trooper's armor, as though something much larger and stronger than it had taken a ravenous bite from its appendage and torso. What was left of the droid's helmed head spun away from the explosion, the right side melted into slag and trailing a cloud of sparks, and its ruined, smoldering torso fell with a crash that sent vibrations through the stone, felt by Foyi through the soles of her feet.

Foyi gave another exhausted gasp as she looked frantically for Vaevi, whom she had last seen rolling toward the lip of the cliff. But the Iktotchi had not fallen, and was even now pushing herself back to her feet, near where the disembodied torso of one of the Dark Troopers continued to attempt to clamber back atop the cliff. Foyi raised her blaster rifle, but it was Vaevi, cursing under her breath as she slung the Scatter Gun over her shoulder, then drew her C-10 Heavy Blaster Pistol again and triggered a flurry of bolts into the droid's hands, blowing them to pieces. With a static-filled squawk, the stunted remains of the Dark Trooper fell free of the ledge, disappearing into the jungle below.

Foyi swung her blaster to the sounds of grunts and matching blades, the crackle and hiss of plasma dragging along phrik alloy, of kicks and punches connecting with hardened muscles or ultrachrome armor. Despite the heated battle that had occurred about them, Rayf and the Inquisitor were still locked in a ferocious melee, the combatants moving above, below, and around each other in a series of lightning-fast dodges, flips, and rolls. Even Foyi, with her Force-enhanced sight, could not track all their movements, and though she raised her blaster in order to assist her friend, the fact that she could not sense the Devaronian woman in the Force, nor track her motions with her eyes, granted her no confidence in her ability to fire into the melee and not injure Rayf in the process. She slung the blaster over her back and drew her discblade, letting it spin in her hand as she awaited an opportunity to strike, while trying not to let herself become mesmerized by the lethal exchange between the two.

Rayf leapt vertically in the air as Vinaq's lightsaber swept at his ankles, allowing him to snap a kick forward with both feet that impacted the Inquisitor's armored chest. The force of the blow knocked the Devaronian backward, but she let her momentum carry her into a backflip, putting a few meters' distance between herself and Rayf. The Matukai Adept whipped his feet backward while still in midair and landed with both feet planted firmly on the clifftop's surface, then using the motion and the Force to propel himself forward in a vicious stab with his polearm. Vinaq let the blade of the wan-shen come within millimeters of her abdomen before she threw herself to the side, and the thrust sliced the air and grazed the trailing edge of her robes. Even as she evaded the attack, her lightsaber came down from a vicious overhead chop that struck the wan-shen's haft, forcing Rayf's weapon down so that she could launch her right foot in a whirling kick that connected with Rayf's ribs. The Matukai's breath exploded from his lungs in a rushing exhale, but he still had the training and presence of mind to drop into a roll, for Vinaq's crimson blade followed her kick in a furious stab aimed at the same point where the toe of her boot had impacted.

Purely on the defensive, and attempting to regain his feet, Rayf continued to roll and scramble, wheezing as he put his wan-shen through a series of sweeping, circular motions, effectively creating a shield to ward the blows of the crimson blade striking down relentlessly upon him. The Inquisitor pursued him ruthlessly, constantly pressing the assault with jumps and forward shuffles, her lightsaber slashing down upon her foe from every conceivable angle she could manage, while pushing the human closer to the confines of the fungal grove. He would be trapped in moments, and they both knew it, a grimace coming to Rayf's features, and a snarl to Vinaq's.

But the Inquisitor's back was now turned to both Foyi and Vaevi, and they seized the opportunity they had been presented immediately. Vaevi raised her heavy blaster pistol and fired a flurry of bolts, while Foyi unleashed her spinning discblade. Sensing the danger, Vinaq leapt away from Rayf, turning her leap into a back flip, twisting in midair to face the pair of women with an enraged countenance. Because of how high she had propelled herself in the stormy air, the blaster bolts went wide, and Rayf even had to evade a pair of them. Foyi directed her discblade upward to track her enemy's flight, but the Inquisitor batted the weapon aside with her lightsaber. She landed in a crouch, her lightsaber sweeping up in a curve of red as Vaevi fired another set of bolts. Most of those bolts flew off into the air or splashing across the lichens and moss at her feet, but a few of those bolts sped quickly back to their source, catching the bounty hunter in her right shoulder and thigh. The Iktotchi screamed and fell, writhing in pain from the deep burns weeping blood and smoke.

Foyi dodged to the side, putting herself between her wounded companion and the fearsome Inquisitor. She opened her hand and herself to the Force, and her discblade spun up from the clifftop's surface to attack the Inquisitor's side. But Vinaq saw it, or sensed it coming, and one of her hands unwrapped from the lightsaber's hilt to gesture at the discblade. Foyi could not feel her drawing on the Force, but she could feel the Force moving, a series of sudden and violent currents that came to center on her discblade, which stopped in midair, shivered viciously for a moment, and impossibly exploded in a shower of sparks, shrapnel, and wrappings, reducing her cherished weapon to little more than dust lost in the wind and the rain. Foyi felt her heart drop into her stomach as she saw this, as the subconscious connection she had to the weapon of the Zeison Sha was abruptly severed. She felt a new hole open in her soul, yet another wound cut across the gaping spiritual injury she had felt ever since Tama had been kidnapped. It was a wound upon her identity, her solidarity. The final assault upon the foundation of Zeison Sha membership and training Foyi had clung to for purpose in her life, the last torrent of destruction in the erosion of all she had known in her life, beginning a little over a week before. Foyi found herself stunned into silence and inaction as she stared at the windblown shards and dust that had once been her own, self-crafted weapon. Her gaze met the furious eyes of the Inquisitor, and instinctively she took a step back, away from this woman who had so gleefully and nonchalantly shattered the core of who she was. The Inquisitor pursued in a loping, threatening stride, her sanguine blade bathing her maroon robes in illumination of blood, casting her gaunt, leering face in stark shadows and washes of scarlet.

Foyi, still reeling from the loss of her weapon and the lingering effects of the stun blast, would have been an open and easy target for Vinaq, had the latter not taken her time to make her way toward the Twi'lek in order to further intimidate her, to feed off the fear, confusion, and despair rippling from her. But Vinaq had not even reached melee striking distance when Rayf was suddenly upon her again, having leapt bodily through the air in a Force-augmented jump, his wan-shen spinning down toward the crown of Vinaq's head in a powerful sweep. The Inquisitor sensed the attack mere seconds before it landed and immediately tucked into a forward roll, carrying her across the intervening space between herself and the Twi'lek. Foyi reacted too late to stop the path of the Inquisitor, her somersault carrying her into Foyi's legs and bowling the Zeison Sha over. Foyi struck the hard surface of stone with a cry of pain, which became a shriek as Vinaq's feet lashed out and connected with her ribs and wounded shoulder. Foyi tried to roll away from the Devaronian, but Vinaq had used the impact with Foyi's body to propel her upward, and Foyi's roll was arrested as the Force gathered around her in a grip like the unyielding appendages of a cruel droid, yanking her upward and back into Vinaq's waiting, physical grasp. Foyi barely had time to register that she had been pulled toward the Inquisitor with the Force before she found the Devaronian's free hand gripped around her throat, and the glare of crimson filled her vision as the Inquisitor's lightsaber hovered just at the tip of her chin. Foyi made herself go completely still, acutely aware of how only a flick of Vinaq's wrist would send the blade of plasma effortlessly through her throat or face. She gave a ragged gasp as the cold, thin fingers of Vinaq's hand closed tighter about her larynx, then cast a panicked glance toward Rayf. The human stood a couple meters away, his chest heaving, paying no heed to the rain falling in sheets upon him, his wide-eyed gaze betraying the fear he so rarely felt as he stared in horror at his friend caught in the grasp of his enemy.

Vinaq's fingers closed tighter, and she wrenched the Twi'lek's head back in a sudden, violent twist that almost caused her to faint. This allowed the Inquisitor to quickly release her hold on Foyi's throat, only for her fingers to seize around Foyi's tchun and thus extend her neck back so far that Foyi had to bend her knees slightly to release some of the pressure. She gave a strangled gasp that became a whimper as the overabundance of nerves in her lekku shrieked at the rough tactile contact. But Foyi dared not struggle too wildly, for the lightsaber followed her motions, keeping within millimeters of the Twi'lek's exposed throat. Rain sparked off the blade's edge in random spurts of energy and sparks. Vinaq's voice emerged just beside her ear, rising into a shout to be heard above the atmospheric disturbances and chorus of thunder. "Do you value this schutta, Thame? Would you further risk her life?"

Rayf spun his wan-shen through a languid circle, before setting the weapon in a diagonal grip across his back, the blade pointed at the ground. The fear that had been so evident in his eyes moments ago had turned to anger, giving the scowl upon his face a quality that promised swift and violent retribution. "This has gone on long enough, Vinaq. You were always powerful, and you have only grown more so in the Emperor's service. But you are alone against three who have managed to destroy your entire force of specialized troops in almost as much time as it takes to say that. You are alone, and your fight is over. I offer you the same deal I did before: you forget about this whole misunderstanding, we forget we ever saw you, and we all go on our separate ways."

Foyi bit her tongue to prevent another whimper from escaping her lips as Vinaq's hold on her lek tightened. There was a sadistic sense of mirth in her voice when she spoke again. "I'm still trying to determine if you actually believe what you're saying, or if you're merely trying to stall me from killing your girlfriend. These odds you suppose are stacked against me don't look so insurmountable from where I'm standing. The only one who could actually be of use to you in your dire circumstances would be the one bawling at the edge of my saber here, and the other is too concerned with the injuries I inflicted upon her to care about either one of you. It's just me and you, Thame, and since you have so graciously extended your previous offer, I will counter with one of my own. You will drop your weapon and willingly give yourself up, or you will watch as the wormhead and brainreader both die at the end of my blade before I kill you myself. You admitted yourself that I am powerful, but I've barely drawn upon that power thus far. You've fought valiantly and heroically, worthy of the archives of your precious Jedi Order, but you know it's only a matter of time before I strike you down."

Rayf flipped his wan-shen around, so that he held it like a spear before him. "Let her go," he growled in a voice Foyi had never heard him use, one that was so filled with anger and impending violence, he sounded like a different being entirely. "You will not harm anyone more again today, Vinaq; not while I'm still alive."

Foyi could hear the sneer in the Inquisitor's answer. "That can be remedied if you refuse to see reason, Thame." She jerked hard on Foyi's tchun, but Foyi refused to cry out, gritting her teeth against the pain and letting the agony shooting through the roots of her lekku, down through her skull, shock her from her stupor, her fear, her quandary regarding her supposed loss of identity. Held fast within the unyielding grip of the Inquisitor, she felt a shiver of shame in herself, in allowing herself to become so distraught over something as simple as a weapon, a symbol of the training she valued that could be easily replaced given time. But the title of Zeison Sha Warrior was not synonymous with the name Foyim'buma, was not the sum of the entirety of her existence. The fog upon her mind and emotions lifted in the jarring clarity provided by that pain and her epiphany, and with barely a conscious thought, she divorced herself from that pain and dove beneath the waves of the Force. She extended her awareness, finding the chilling void that was the Inquisitor clutching her body so close and pushing past it, to the presence of Vaevi, radiating with equal measures of pain and determination, and the presence of Rayf, a tumultuous cauldron of pain, fatigue, and barely-controlled rage. She sent calming eddies toward his essence, urging him to be at peace, to reach for the balance he constantly attempted to maintain within himself and the Unifying Force. He reciprocated with feigned confidence and true concern for her, but offered the strength and connection they had shared beforehand, when she had reached through the Force over all Felucia looking for her lost sister.

Vinaq tightened her grip on Foyi's tchun, pulling her head against her armored breast. Her lightsaber came up just beneath the Twi'lek's chin, her skin beginning to blister and smolder in such close proximity to the bloody blade in a final threat, for it was likely that she could feel the sensations passing through the Force between Foyi and Rayf, even if she could not necessarily decipher them. Vinaq's movements suggested she would end the Twi'lek's life given even the slightest provocation, but this only served to leave Foyi with one of the simplest choices she had made in recent days. Either she acted to try and help herself and her companions, or she died. Realizing the simplicity of the choice presented her, she found a serenity that suffused her form, keeping her muscles loose and waiting for any opportunity.

"You have nothing more to say?" Vinaq's voice hissed in her ear, once again addressing Rayf. "Then is that your final answer? Do you care so little for these foolish females who accompany you that you would-"

But Vinaq never got the chance to finish her sentence, for Foyi called on the Force to enhance her speed and brought her loose arms upward, her forearms contacting the wrist and forearm of the Inquisitor's sword arm. She felt the lighsaber's blade carve off the upper layer of her epidermis from her chin as she knocked the arm, and by extension, the fearsome blade up and away from her vitals. Vinaq immediately fought the impact and began to swing her lighsaber back toward the Twi'lek, but her insistence upon keeping hold of Foyi's tchun limited her movements. She instead yanked again on Foyi's lek, attempting to pull the Twi'lek down to the ground and thus leave her open for a stab, but Foyi threw herself back into the Inquisitor with enough velocity to bear them both to the hard stone. She felt Vinaq's air leave her lungs as her weight collapsed upon the Devaronian's armored chest, and her grip slackened enough that Foyi was able to flick her tchun away from her grasping fingers. Instead of rolling away and off the Inquisitor, Foyi pressed her hands behind her and let the Force erupt from her palms in a telekinetic shove that sent Foyi flying up and back to her feet, while further grinding the Devaronian into the hard stone surface beneath. Foyi's heels barely hit the ground before she let herself fall forward and tuck into a roll, which carried her just past Rayf's position. She whirled back around in time to see Rayf bursting forward, his wan-shen held like a spear, putting all his speed and strength behind a stab meant to skewer Vinaq straight into the clifftop's surface.

But Vinaq, wheezing agonizingly now, had not lost her own strength in the Force. She did not try to evade or regain her feet, but remained prone and focused on whipping her lightsaber in from the side, where it intercepted the stab from the wan-shen and forced the weapon harmlessly to the side. Rayf recalculated immediately, stepping in from behind the failed attack for a lightning-fast kick to the Inquisitor's abdomen. Vinaq rolled slightly to the side, so that she accepted most of the ferocity of the kick in the side she had exposed. She gave a screech that was more rage than pain, and her lightsaber whirled back around, and almost took Rayf's leg off at the knee. He leapt back to avoid the whirling blade, and Vinaq took the opportunity to push off the stone with the Force and find herself upright again. She was still barely breathing, but this did not slow her down as she put her lightsaber in a spin to build momentum. She leapt back and forth, twisting her body from side to side like a contortionist as Rayf attempted to strike her with a flurry of stabs and slashes with both ends of his weapon, scything only through air. She continued to spin her lightsaber, not bothering to block any strikes or attacks, but the air warped and the thunder seemed to increase as the Dark Side gathered around her.

Vinaq contorted her body to the left to avoid a trio of slashes to her right side, then leapt up into the air, arcing through the meter and a half of intervening space between herself and Rayf. With a scream of rage that rippled through the Force and sent painful vibrations through the tips of Foyi's lekku, Vinaq hurled down upon Rayf with her lightsaber curving down from above her head; its scarlet blade flared as Rayf predictably raised his wan-shen horizontally to catch the blade and the lightsaber contacted the polished hilt between his hands. With a horrid shrieking, the wan-shen's haft split down the middle. Foyi watched in horror as that blade sheered through the wan-shen and arced down for Rayf's chest, but she felt nothing but calm from Rayf, as though he had fully expected her strike to be aimed precisely to destroy his weapon, The lightsaber slicing down toward his sternum, he called upon his supernatural speed and dived to the side, a jagged, smoldering half of his weapon in each hand. The lightsaber cut a deep groove in the stone at the Inquisitor's feet, a groove that only grew as she slid the blade to the side and out into the air in pursuit of Rayf. The human's dive brought him back to his feet, but he had not anticipated Vinaq being so close to him, and he had not the time to react to the two-handed stab aimed for his torso.

A stab that never reached its target, as the scarlet lightsaber suddenly went wide and Vinaq cried out. For Foyi had not remained idle, telekinetically seizing a small stone and hurling it across the clifftop's surface, the projectile whipping through the air to impact the hilt of the lightsaber with an echoing clang of stone against metal. The stone did no damage to the weapon, but the force it applied redirected her stab enough to keep the lightsaber from entering Rayf's flesh. Vinaq cast an enraged glance Foyi's way, only to provide an opening for Rayf, wielding the severed pieces of his weapon like twin daggers, striking precisely and quickly. The wan-shen's blade slid across Vinaq's right forearm, slicing deeply through the thick sleeve and between a seam of her armor, drawing tears of blood to accompany the falling droplets of rain. The other half of his weapon spun down upon her left wrist, the red-hot end where the lightsaber had severed it stabbing through her leather glove and burning deep into her flesh.

The Inquisitor gave a shriek of pain as both of her hands lost their grips on her weapon, the pain too intense for her to properly control her palms and fingers anymore. The lightsaber whirled free of her gasp, its blade snuffed from existence as the hilt spun in midair and bounced across the slippery stone surface. The Inquisitor seemed to just be realizing that she had been disarmed when Rayf followed his strikes with another momentous kick, landing it in her abdominal armor and sending her sprawling. Vinaq attempted to halt her tumble, but Foyi had no intention of letting her regain her composure or fighting prowess, unleashing a telekinetic push across the stone surface, the blast of air and displaced rain scattering shrapnel and loose moss as it traveled like a missile across the cliffop and caught the Inquisitor in the side. The Force completely changed the trajectory of Vinaq's flailing tumble, and before she could catch hold of anything or right herself, she flew away and tumbled over the lip of the cliff with barely a whisper of zeyd-cloth and a spray of water droplets.

Foyi extended her consciousness until she could no longer feel the unnatural void in the Force denoting Vinaq's presence due to distance and the morass of Force presences within the jungles below. She gave a ragged exhale, and immediately rushed to where Vaevi still lay, cursing the pain radiating from her wounds as tears of anger and agony slid from her eyes and joined the rain running down her jaw and chin. The Twi'lek dropped in a crouch beside the wounded bounty hunter, and saw the Iktotchi struggling with the clasps of her pack. "Let me help you," Foyi urged, taking the pack herself and opening it to peer into its contents. "What're you looking for?"

"Medpac", Vaevi replied simply through gritted teeth. "Is...the Jedi-hunter...dead?"

Rayf stumbled over to their sides, dropping to his knees and letting out a long, shuddering breath. He seemed visibly shaken, more spiritually than physically, and Foyi could still feel the vague and stormy jumble of emotions within him that he did not bother to hide. The duel with someone he had recognized, who had been as a stranger to him still, had drained him, and the normal stoicism and serenity with which he held himself was thrown all into disarray. Foyi gave him a furtive, pained glance as she pulled the medpac from Vaevi's bag and flipped it open. "I didn't kill her. I just threw her off the cliff."

Vaevi pulled her bloodstained hand from her thigh wound and snatched the kit from Foyi's hands, and began rummaging through it with quivering, spastic fingers. "Then...th-the fall will kill her."

"Unlikely," Rayf answered hollowly, gazing off into the lashing rain and darkness. His features were momentarily lit by a skittering of lightning bisecting the sky and boiling clouds overhead. "Probably the most we can hope for is that she breaks a leg or sprains her neck. Either way, we've bought ourselves some time." He returned his attention to the wounded bounty hunter, and grimaced at the blood leaking from the burns scythed through her shadowsilk garment and the skin beneath. The Iktotchi pulled a small cylinder with an injector on one end and a light on the other, and without hesitation stabbed the syringe into her leg, just below the wound in her thigh, and gave a gasp as the blue-tinged bacta held within the ampule suffused her veins and began the regenerative process of her damaged tissues, while mitigating some small measure of pain from her injuries. She reached for the medpac again, but Rayf leaned forward, dropping the two halves of his wan-shen to the stone beside her and seizing the kit from her smeared, moist hands. Vaevi let her head fall back into the cushion of mud and moss below her, and simply lay still as Rayf extracted a pair of bacta patches, handing one to Foyi, trusting she knew what to do with it. Foyi unwrapped the patch, then bent down and tore away enough of the burnt edges of the shadowsilk so that the patch only contacted skin. She finished applying the patch at the same time Rayf finished with Vaevi's shoulder, and the bounty hunter uttered a string of expletives and exhalations before she finally sighed as her wounds began to absorb the bacta from the patches.

"How're you feeling now?" Foyi asked, keeping her stare locked upon the agonized grimace etched into Vaevi's countenance.

"So stellar I could just throw up," she answered through gritted teeth.

"Can you walk?"

"Of course I can," Vaevi grumbled, groaning as she levered herself off the stone using her uninjured arm and leg. She made it to a standing position only briefly, but when she tried to put a little weight on her injured leg, she would have fallen over had Rayf and Foyi not both caught her. "Maybe not. Not very well, anyway," she added begrudgingly. She wrapped an arm around Foyi's shoulder, which drew an involuntary hiss of pain as her weight settled upon the Twi'lek's wounded shoulder and prompted more blood from the deep lacerations there.

Rayf peered over the Iktotchi's head, and his gaze widened again to see the wound on Foyi's shoulder. "You're hurt," he remarked in a hoarse voice.

"I'll be fine," Foyi replied irritably. She looked up at the pitch-black sky, at the torrential rains still falling upon her face and into her eyes. Despite the prevalence of water shed by the sky, the rain was warm and humid, almost viscous in its composition, and after the exertion of battle and injury, she felt covered in grime. Almost every portion of her body experienced aches and pains so intense, she could barely keep her own feet. In spite of this, she remained upright by a hope and enthusiasm she had not felt during this entire search; she had finally confirmed the planet where Tama had been kidnapped, the same planet she now walked. More importantly, she had determined that Tama remained alive for certain. In spite of all that had occurred in the last few moments, her spirit felt more at peace, more joyful, buoyant even, than it had in many days, and it motivated the lively pace of her steps. "We need to get off this ridge and keep moving. I'll get myself patched up when we're somewhere safer."

Rayf gave her a skeptical look, his gaze sliding significantly toward the Iktotchi. "I don't know how much moving we really should be doing."

Vaevi turned her grimace toward him. "If you're talking about me, I'm not an invalid. I've been shot up worse than this and survived...I'll be fine. I might just need a little help here or there."

"If nothing else, we need to find a place where Va—where all of us can rest. A place anymore Imperials lurking around can't find us so easily."

Rayf conceded the point with a nod. "Then let's plot a course outta here."

"Well, if we're going to rest, we shouldn't take too long," Vaevi remarked irritably as the Twi'lek began to help her hobble down the slippery and treacherous slopes. "We still need to find 'the Shepherd'...and any younglings he might still have imprisoned."

"Believe me, I've not forgotten," Foyi replied adamantly. "And with Rayf's help, I finally connected with my sister. She's here, on Felucia, and she's alive. I didn't get a very good impression of her, or much information on where she is, but she left me feelings and images to help us locate her. And now that I've connected with her, I can just barely feel her presence, out there in the jungle. We'll find her now. I know we will."

Vaevi gave her a dark expression. "And 'the Shepherd'? Did you sense him?"

Foyi shook her head. "I don't know. I got the impression that Tama is no longer anywhere near him, as she didn't seem to be in immediate danger."

Vaevi fell silent after that, leaning heavily on Foyi as she picked her way carefully down the treacherous slopes, which could barely be seen through the darkness and obscuring sheets of rain that continued to fall. Behind them, and further up the slope, Rayf paused as he retrieved the halves of his wan-shen. With a sigh, he deconstructed the weapon and stowed the pieces in their holsters upon his belt and back to the best of his ability. He turned to follow the two women, to catch up to them and offer his help in Vaevi's wounded state, but a flash of metal upon the stone less than a meter from him caught his eye. He approached the discarded device, to find the silver and white ribbed hilt of the Inquisitor's lightsaber, laying in a rapidly expanding puddle of mud and viscous water in a depression on the slope's surface. He squatted down and retrieved the weapon, lovingly wiping mud from its gleaming surface, a combination of nostalgia and apprehension on his features. He turned the lightsaber in his hands a few times, acclimating himself to the heft and contours of the grip of a weapon he had not held in decades, momentarily losing himself in memories. Thunder severed the sky above him, shaking him from his reverie, and he stood again, absentmindedly clipping the lightsaber to his belt and allowing himself a small measure of excitement at having such a weapon upon his side once more. Without another look back, Rayf scrambled down the slope, closing the distance between himself and his companions, and coming to Vaevi's other side, so that he might assist the wounded bounty hunter back to the forest floor far below.