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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ankh-Morpork Guard" data-source="post: 2954201" data-attributes="member: 10079">Chapter 382: Not Like We PlannedFloating high above the lush, untouched forests of Ithor was the city of Tafanda Bay. The capital of the planet, and the largest of the great, floating cities that the Ithorians inhabited, it was where the Jedi had gathered for their makeshift meeting. But it hadn’t been simply Jedi...Ithorian officials, New Republic officers, and other people focused on protecting the planet were all there, standing around a great courtyard in the open air.    Because of the amount of people there, it wasn’t hard for Jyren, Marix, and Tobias to go relatively unnoticed. Well, until Skywalker looked up and straight through the crowd to them. He said nothing, however, but the fact remained that Jyren and Skywalker had never truly...gotten along in their few meetings. Most of it was probably because Skywalker asked too many questions that Jyren knew he couldn’t answer. Not only to protect Alraxia, but to keep any extra suspicions off of himself.    But the gathering itself centered around a few more vocal Jedi. Arguments erupted about the duel that Corran Horn had challenged the Vong commander to...and, apparently, about Horn’s position in the New Republic military. It wasn’t long before things had lost control and shouting began.    At that point, Jyren and Marix exchanged a careful look. Even the link was silent, though, as neither needed words to express their feelings. This was exactly why Tobias did not need to be involved with the Jedi. They were divided...like the rest of the galaxy. Infighting was growing and people were too busy beating themselves up than focusing on fighting the Vong. And yet...both of them saw the light in Toby’s eyes. He seemed completely unfazed by any of this.    [Something is watching us.]    Marix finally broke the link’s ‘silence’ after finally having enough of that feeling. It wasn’t from the Force...it was just...her natural senses.    [I don’t feel anything.] Jyren responded, his eyes glancing from side to side but doing his best not to turn around...just in case.    Turning her head to give him a look, Marix rolled her eyes. [Something is watching us.]    [Fine.] Jyren sighed and shook his head. [Something’s watching us. There are a lot of people here. That shouldn’t be too surprising.]    It was a miracle she didn’t punch him. Instead, though, she gave him a good kick to the shin, which required less movement. Jyren managed to bite back any noise beyond a groan, then glared at her. [Fine. Lead the way.]    Marix gave him a nod, then looked to her other side where Tobias stood and took his arm while saying quietly, “We’re leaving.”    Before he was given any chance to protest, Marix dragged him away, with Jyren right behind to make sure he couldn’t turn and run back. This drew no attention, thankfully, as others had left as the Jedi’s arguments grew more heated and pointless. Leading the way down an open street, Marix wove a path through the few Ithorians that were around before stopping in the center of a long, open area with a large amount of shops. But it was surprisingly empty of people...    The protests from Tobias about being dragged along ended immediately. Even he could feel it.    “I don’t like this,” Jyren said simply.    Toby’s eyes turned from the street to Jyren, “Why are we here?”    “You can feel it, Toby,” Marix answered, her eyes carefully scanning the open street but finding nothing.    Jyren watched Tobias shake his head, “No, I can’t! There’s nothing but us here!”    Marix then turned around to look back to Tobias and then to Jyren, “That’s the problem.”    Nodding, Jyren helped explain as quickly as he could, “This street was packed with Ithorians before the Jedi gathering.”    Footsteps silenced any other response from either Marix or Tobias. All six eyes darted up to see a pair of humans in normal looking clothes walking out of a building and down the street the other direction. They took no notice of the three ‘humans’ who were all on edge...    [Those people shouldn’t be there.] Jyren said over the link, wanting Toby to hear it but suddenly terrified to speak out loud.    [No, they should...] she trailed off a moment, about to go on about people needing to be on a busy street, but then she picked up on it, too. [They aren’t there.]    [But they are.]    That could only mean one thing.    “Hey!” Jyren called out to the two humans, “You two! Stop a second!”    They did stop. Almost in one motion, the two very tall, plain looking humans turned around and looked at the three of them. They said nothing, though.    Marix looked to Jyren a moment, obviously ready to act but noting that he seemed to have taken the initiative for once. Taking a few more steps closer to the two of them, Jyren reached into his jacket and retrieved his not-so-well-hidden lightsaber.    “Stay where you are!” he said in the same stern voice, which was then followed by the distinct snap-hiss of the lightsaber activating and the blue-green glow bathing the area in a soft light.    Then the two humans did speak, “Jeedai!”    And then, suddenly, each of the ‘humans’ were charging at Jyren, a snake-like coil slithering down their arms and into their hands. The coil became a solid staff-like weapon with the head of a snake that Jyren knew as a Yuuzhan Vong amphistaff.    “Toby, get back!” Jyren yelled over his shoulder while quickly getting into a defensive stance and bringing his lightsaber up to slight the amphistaff, that was swinging down at his shoulder, in two. But something went wrong. It didn’t cut.    Instead, the amphistaff impacted with his lightsaber blade with a strength that Jyren could barely match as a human. But instead of having to force the weapon back like he would with most lightsaber combatants, the attacker took a step back, pulled his weapon away to throw Jyren off balance, then dove forward, driving the staff’s snake head at Jyren’s stomach.    Somehow, Jyren managed to keep his balance and swing his lightsaber down to bat the head of the weapon off to the side...but that was when the second attacker started his strike. From Jyren’s side, the second amphistaff swung down at his back, the snake-head tilted down and ready to rake its teeth across him.    But by then, Marix was close enough to drive her metal knife deep into the second attacker’s spine. She had used Jyren’s open distraction to sneak around, looking as helpless in a fight as she could until she withdrew the weapon and got in a position to strike. But when her blade dug into the attacker’s back, there was no noise beyond a grunt and the knife cutting through fabric and...and...something that wasn’t bone and definitely was not human flesh.    The Vong spun around at her, forcing Marix to withdraw her weapon as she ducked under the staff as it swung over her head before assuming a more whip-like structure. At the same time, it became obvious why the knife had felt strange digging into the thing’s back...just as with the first Vong she had encountered, the human ‘skin’ peeled away.     And, in another second, standing before her was an Alraxian-sized Yuuzhan Vong warrior. His scarred and tattooed face formed a sneer as he growled, “Bre’ln eck dre!”    This was followed by the amphistaff, which had half of its body coiled around the Vong’s massive right arm,  to swing around and then strike out at her just like the snake it resembled. Marix sidestepped the sudden strike before bringing her arms up to catch the Vong’s leg, which had followed with a quick kick towards her chest. But Marix caught his boot and then reversed his momentum to spin the Vong hard onto the ground.    Knowing, already, how dangerous the Vong were in combat, Marix did not waste this advantage. She immediately came down on the massive warrior, her leg stamping down on the amphistaff that was coiled around his arm and holding the both of them down before she bent over and used all of her strength(which, as a human, wasn’t much) to drive the knife into the Vong’s neck. There was a gasp, a sharp hiss from the Vong, and then before Marix watched his eyes glaze over, the ampistaff wrapped around her leg and dug its fangs deep into her thigh.    The violent pain of this was followed by a sharp feeling of something being injected into her leg, and she wasn’t able to hold back the cry of pain before wrenched away from the now-dead Vong warrior and his weapon.    “Marix!” Jyren spun around to look over his shoulder to her the second he felt the pain in his own leg. He watched her stumble back a couple of steps before falling to the ground on her back. But before Jyren could do anything, the attacker in front of him(also shed of his human disguise and another very large Vong) struck...and Jyren paid for his lack of attention by taking a slash to the face from the sharp edge of the amphistaff.    He yelped as the pain caused him to nearly black out, and did his best to use the Force to heal the wound rather than just remorphing it right there. It was impossible to tell who all was watching.    Gritting his teeth, Jyren turned back to the Vong and gave him a good, strong kick to the chest. It sent the large warrior into the building behind him with a hard crack, and provided Jyren with just enough time to point his saber at the Vong and drive it straight into the warrior’s chest. For good measure, Jyren cut a long wound out of the Vong’s shoulder before the thing finally collapsed to the ground.    With the adrenaline fading, the sharp, intense pain of the slash across his face nearly overwhelmed Jyren. His vision faded into a blurry mesh of colours as he tried to turn and make sure Marix was alright. No longer caring who might be around, Jyren decided to get rid of the pain and focused on remorphing the wound before it became a permanent scar.    When it faded, the pain didn’t completely, but the echo of it was bearable. His vision became cleared, and he could then see Tobias next to Marix, who, through the link, he could feel destroying a violent poison in her system. She was alright. In fact, it was better her to be the one poisoned...as he would have had no idea how to fight it.    But before he could walk over to the two of them, Jyren’s ears picked up another sound over the still-thrumming noise of his lightsaber.    “Put down the weapon, Captain,” Rulae Nok said in a slightly wavering voice from across the large street. The Duros was wearing his uniform and holding a blaster pistol, aimed straight at Jyren.((It should be mentioned that the exact timeline of events has been/is going to keep being fudged a bit. Some of this is just to keep things fresh or make them work better for THIS. Overall, though, everything that happens is still close enough to the actual timeline of events for the Vong War that its hard to tell. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />))</blockquote>

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