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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ankh-Morpork Guard" data-source="post: 3022985" data-attributes="member: 10079">Chapter 394: Storage Closests“Just go check down the hall,” Jyren was doing his best to keep his voice level and calm, but that was always difficult when he was forced to repeat himself, “Let me worry about the door here. Go make sure there’s not anything else we need to know about.”    The Mon Calamari and Twi’lek exchanged glances, and Rea started to open her mouth to argue once again...but Loro’s fin-shaped hand grabbed her arm as she reached to point at Jyren. She shot him a surprised look, but his voice remained surprisingly calm, “Come on.”    There was a sigh from her, but she relented and followed the Mon Calamari down the corridor to check the rest of the building’s ground level. When they were out of sight, Jyren turned to the door that had a long lightsaber mark across it...and was also dented inwards a great deal. And yet, attempting to force it open had done them no good.    “What happened here?” Tobias asked in a quiet voice, knowing it would carry and actually being cautious for the first time in his life.    Jyren spared the young man a glance before shrugging and focusing his attention on the door. There was one way to open it, and it required the other two to leave. Now that they were gone, Jyren didn’t have to worry about it...    Half-closing his eyes and drawing himself inwards, Jyren did his best to silence his mind and focus. It took a few moments, and then Jyren opened his eyes and drew on the Force. There was a series of creaks followed by a sudden, unnecessarily loud crack before the door broke off of its seals and shot inwards, hitting the back wall of the room a good ten meters away...that also made a loud bang that, if they had been Alraxian, would have got his and Tobias’ ears ringing.    Immediately upon the silence that followed, Jyren cringed. He hadn’t meant to use so much...well...force, but the damn thing was jammed well and so he’s just put more into it until it broke. Of course, this meant that another second later both Loro and Rea scrambled back around the corner with blasters drawn and ready to shoot.    Jyren, face in hand, called over to them with a sigh, “I got it open.”    By the time the two were next to them again, the blasters were holstered, thankfully, but there was still a definite look of surprise on both of their faces. Or at least, what passed as surprise for a Mon Calamari. It was Rea who stepped over in front of Jyren to look straight at him, “How the hell did you do that?”    “I just pushed...” he shrugged, stepping around her to finally look in the room and put aside the fact that ‘just pushing’ wouldn’t have put the door on the opposite wall.    If any other questions were asked, Jyren pretended not to hear them and turned his attention to the room. It was, from what he could tell, a storage room of sorts...boxes and crates, some of which had been smashed by the door, were stacked across the large room, leaving it generally unremarkable. But as he looked around, his eyes caught something that was definitely not a box.    Near the back, thankfully off to the side, was a body. More specifically, the body of a Yuuzhan Vong.    But it wasn’t like any Vong Jyren had ever seen. This was not an Alraxian sized and powerfully built warrior. In fact, the only weapon he could see was a small, dagger-like object sitting on a cloth loop at the hip of the corpse...it wasn’t even drawn. This Vong was tall, yes, and still looked to have had strong muscles beneath the mutilations, scars, and tattoos across his flesh, but he wore robes. And not only did he wear robes, but his right hand was...odd...Jyren was forced to kneel down to look at it more carefuly, seeing a six fingered hand that had strange devices grafted onto them.    As he sat back and the others came to look, Jyren noted a few black marks across the Vong’s already dark skin, indicating he was killed by a volley of blaster fire. But certainly not in the raid that had killed and captured the others. This Vong was the only body left, the rest had been cleared out...and it was inside a room that Jyren had used the Force to break into it. The sweep of the first New Republic troops through here hadn’t even gotten into this room.    So how had this Vong been killed?    Jyren just shook his head as he got to his feet. There was, as usual, something odd going on that was far enough beneath the surface to be out of reach.    “Get the soldiers outside,” he said finally, “Tell them we found something new and get them in here.”    “Yes, sir,” Loro saluted and squeezed past the others to head back outside.    As he did so, Jyren looked to Rea, “Stay here with Toby.”    “Where are you going?” it was, of course, Tobias that asked that.    “Going to find a console and see if anything else important was missed,” Jyren started to head out of the room, and he didn’t need the Force to tell him to stop and wave a hand, “Stay here, Toby.”    He didn’t turn around to make sure that Tobias listened. Jyren simply turned a corner to head down where Loro and Rea had first gone towards before he’d managed to open the door. No, he didn’t know if there even was a console anywhere near...but he had to try to find something. More importantly, though, he needed time to think. From the moment he’d seen that door, there had been a very bad feeling rising in him.    And, sadly, Jyren knew that his bad feelings were rarely wrong.</blockquote>

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