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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ragboy" data-source="post: 1711973" data-attributes="member: 4151">-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- “Is this your doing, Rek!?” Arani yelled while taking double-fisted blaster shots at the maintenance droid.  “Nah…no,” the merchant looked genuinely confused and shaken. A nasty burn across his forehead wept dark blood. “The droid belongs to the men I hired. I hope your friends are okay.” “I hope for those thugs’ sakes that they are, too,” she growled, firing two blasts into the droid and shifting to another position. “Keep your head down and see what you can do with Toba.” She pitched the man a blaster and a medpac, ducking behind the wrecked wall instinctively as the droid began firing its dual blaster rifles in her direction. Arani popped up and fired, then rushed forward with a thermal detonator. Two blaster bolts slammed into her as she arced the grenade at the droid. Ignoring her wounds, she dove back behind cover as the conference room exploded into a ball of searing flame. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- “Sia!” Rann shook his Jedi companion. “Are you okay?”  The girl’s eyes rolled back in their sockets and Rann felt a cold void of fear open in his gut. Visions of Wei-Lun’s house imploding in flame, of friends left scorched on battlefields in Naboo and of the near-constant hounding by unnamed assailants since they’d left rushed into the void exploding into bright, clear anger. Rann roared as he surged around the side of the maintenance shed, surprising the soldiers as they approached. His lightsaber cleaved one nearly in half and threw the other off-balance. Rann sent the man sprawling with a kick, barely recoiled as the man's wild shot creased his cheek with searing pain and, spinning his lightsaber, impaled the screaming soldier in the armored faceplate. A blaster bolt exploded on the maintenance shed over Rann’s head, and he whirled to face Mirek’s companion, the thug's blaster smoking and mouth agape. The young Jedi dissolved into a blur of motion and suddenly stood over the cringing thug.  “No, nononono! Don’t…no..don’t kill me,” the man cried, pitching away his blaster and covering his face.  His eyes flashing, Rann raised his blade. “Who are you working for? Tell me, and your death will be a quick one.”  The man’s face fell and he tried to scramble back in a panic. Rann’s blade slashed at the plastcrete landing pad near the thug's head and he froze.  “Alright, alright,” he said. “I’ll tell you. Descant. He’s local. A petty crime boss. Said he’d give me 200 credits for your heads and the girl. Alive.” -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- As the smoke cleared in the ruined conference room, Arani painfully raised her head to peer over cover. Melted lighting fixtures flickered revealing the smoking chassis of the maintenance droid. She slumped back with a sigh, looking over to her companions. Rek, the merchant, had just finished patching up Toba. In the distance she could hear the whine of Piranell City security sirens.  A barked command and the shuffle of boots alerted her, and she popped over the barricade, pistols at the ready. A security team fanned out into the ruined room, their blaster rifles coming up as they spotted her.  “Freeze!” one of the security soldiers barked. “Put your weapon on the deck and stand up!” “I don’t think that will be necessary, gentleman,” a cultured voice said.  Thune Markle stepped lightly into the devastation, peering through the smoke and flickering lights. At a gesture the security troops filed out of the room.  “Arani? Are you there?”  “Late as always, aren’t you?” Arani said with a grimaced smirk.  “I must apologize for this, my friend,” The Bothan glided across the room, attempting to keep his rich robes from the ashes and debris. “I alerted security as soon as I heard.” “How could you have heard?” Arani asked, standing and holstering her pistols. “It _just_ happened.”  “It is worse than a random attack, I’m afraid,” Thune said. “A local crime boss, Descant, organized this at the behest of an offworlder. A bounty hunter named Boors.” “Great,” Arani sighed, looking into the startled eyes of her customer. “It’s not what you think, Mr. Yern. I’m legit. We just ran into some trouble on Naboo.” “I…I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry to have caused you this trouble,” the man stammered. “I believe you. Of course, you still have my business.” “I am afraid it is even more serious than that, Arani,” Thune said, pulling her aside and lowering his voice. “This…Boors… he has a small army and he’s heading to Benelli Prime right now. My sources tell me he’s due in system within the day.”  “Who’s he working for? The Trade Feds? Surely they don’t care about me and a couple of yokel Jedi.”  “I do not know,” the Bothan said as if not knowing pained him more than almost losing his friend. “But, I shall find out. In the meantime, we have to get your ship loaded and on its way. I have already arranged for exit visas and a friend here at the spaceport will make sure that all records of your stay here are purged.”  Rann appeared at the shattered conference room door, Sia-Lann leaning heavily on his shoulder.  “What happened?” he barked, easing Sia-Lann to the ground. “We were attacked on the landing pad. Is this guy in on it?” His face set, he stormed across the room toward Rek Yern, waving his deactivated lightsaber. “Rann, settle down,” Arani said, interposing herself between the merchant and the Jedi. “He had no idea. They were a couple of day laborers he hired.”  “Some… Descant… he set this up?” Rann said. He touched the wound on his face and looked at his hand, confused suddenly, drained. “I…ah… I think I did something really bad.”  -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Sia-Lann Wezz sat on her bed, her knees clasped to her chin. The pain of the blaster's stun bolt still radiated across her back.  What have we done? she wondered, thinking back over the last few weeks.  War and Wei-Lun's death and flight across the galaxy...in all that time she hadn't had time to think. To consider what they actually should do. It seemed logical to go to Coruscant. To seek guidance and report the loss of their master. Now nothing seemed logical. Fallen Jedi and bounty hunters harrowing them at every turn. She felt that Rann was slipping away without the guidance of a true Jedi. And the strange woman's message in a dirty alley. Could Wei-Lun still be alive, somehow? Did this...Uduz...hold the answers? She often tried to hold the Force to use it for knowledge and understanding, but the questions and the chaos that seemed to live inside kept her occluded. Though she had more doubts than ever before, she calmed her mind now, reaching out with the Force for an answer...a path that her and her friends should trod. ***A searing wind whipped pale green sand into a dust devil, whipping across a barren dusty plain. Around this plain crouched massive green basalt hills, their visages scoured and shaped like dour old men huddling over a fire. In the center stood a pinnacle of the strange stone, not one carved by the wind, but by intelligent hands. The spire seemed long enough to pierce the orange sun of the Benelli system.  Below the spire, a small adobe chapel sat, and before it a creature, indistinct in the growing sand storm.  "You are called, young one." The creature's voice felt like sweet soft music. "A darkness gathers and you are called."  "Why?" Sia-Lann felt the question pulled from her. "Why me?" "You are called," the creature repeated and the scene faded to a greenish blur and hissing sand.</blockquote>

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