Collan, Nightshade, Nill, Nim, Trax: Raid on Horuz

[Trax]

Even if Trax hadn't been so caught up in the anger and frustration within that Keshani's question would have caught him by complete surprise.  The girl had knocked the anger and frustration right out of him, at least temporarily.  The image of Mariah lying in the stasis pod filled his mind and he let out a heavy sigh as Kesh's question, and the image it invoked reminded him of his failure to protect the girl.

"You uh...you do remind me of someone." Trax said, sounding almost defeated.

[OOC: Need to change the distance we'll be from the lead group.  I just double checked the damage radius of standard Grenades, we'll be about 10M from the others.]

[Keshani]

She watched his reaction as they walked.

She wasn't good at reading people's emotions. But she WAS good at observing people. That was important when one survived by begging and stealing from others...

And it was almost painfully obvious that her question had...jarred...the man who seemed hell-bent on killing every stormtrooper within reach of his blaster.

The heavy sigh that proceeded his almost equally short reply was maybe the strongest display of emotion (other than hatred) that she had yet seen from him.

"You uh...you do remind me of someone.". There was a tone of SOMETHING in his voice. She wasn't sure exactly what. But it wasn't anger. That was for sure.

Her eyes flicked to Nim, registering that she may not like the direction this conversation was going, before turning back to Trax and nodding slightly in acknowledgement of his reply.

Should she push? It still seemed important, somehow. And while she wasn't sure WHY, it just....did.

"Who was she?" She asked, again her eyes flicking in Nim's direction.

[Trax]

"Important." he replied, being purposely even more vague than he normally would be due to Keshani's use of the word 'was' and of course, the topic.

[Keshani]

"Important." he replied, being purposely even more vague than he normally would be due to Keshani's use of the word 'was' and of course, the topic.

Her eyes burned a bit brighter as she openly stopped and turned to stare at Trax for a minute. Suddenly what they were doing here, the danger they were up against, the storm troopers who were even now marching in their direction intent on killing them all, didn't matter.

Because in her mind it was like a momentary freeze. She was hooked onto the fact that he had admitted that:

1) she reminded him of someone
2) that this person was important to him.

"Important". Yeah. Right. Important. On a scale of 1 to 1 million she would bet that "Important" ranked pretty high up there.....

She felt like she was being painted on some sort of pedestal of sorts. That suddenly she wasn't only herself, but this other person that she reminded him of, as well.

The...tenderness....that he had carried her with after he had seen how badly she was hurt, the care that he obviously had toward her....they were for someone else. Someone who was not her. But she was trapped with the responsibility of being both herself and this other person to him right now.

She shook her head to herself. No. This wasn't her internal battle to fight, but his.

"Ok. Fine. But do you really think she'd want you to die for her? Because that seems to be what you're trying to do here..."

She shrugged and turned around to keep walking, following the others, her foot steps a bit heavier than before, a bit of a flush evident on her cheeks.

[Trax]

"Die?" Trax was obviously confused by the girl's statement.

"I have no intentions of dying here.  Makes it a little hard to be sure we get out of here if I'm dead."

[Keshani]

She shrugged but didn't turn around. "Seems like maybe you should stop trying so hard then"

[Nim Naja]

Nim shook her head and a string of Huttese expletives slipped off her tongue. "I swear everyone else has a death wish, because nobody can mind their own frakkin' business and pretend that we're actually on a mission!"


She probably should have checked herself, but just couldn't this time. The withdrawals had started and the Jedi were not helping, and now the new girl wanted to get all up in their grill. So many debates she wanted to get into but why start now?


They were in such a world of shit.

[Trax]

A dangerous smile crossed Trax's face.  He had the look one would expect a predator to show just before it landed the death blow to its prey.  And he almost let out a chuckle when Nim spoke.  This distraction, as uncomfortable as the beginning of it was, had caused him to lose focus on most of his anger.

"Girl, if those troopers had a hope in hell of hitting me I'd be a lot more careful.

But don't worry, we've got our fearless group of jedi in the lead now.  Not only will they save our lives, they'll save the lives of the troopers too."

The rebel moved up beside Nim and put his arm around her, pulling her tightly against him for a few steps.  He was fairly certain if her language could kill, the rest of them would just be along for the ride.  But he did feel for the woman, her withdrawal had started and it was going to get a whole lot worse pretty quickly.

"If our moral guides get too slow, I'll put some plasma at their feet.  See if that doesn't hurry them up a bit." he whispered softly.  "I promise."

[Keshani]

As muted as her emotions currently were, the teenage girl still felt her stomach twinge a bit uneasily at Trax's response.

It wasn't exactly the stormies that she was worried about at the moment....

Her gaze shifted between Trax and then to Nim. Was there a bit of something close to hurt in the young girl's eyes? It was difficult to tell.

But then the girl shrugged again.

"I guess it's a good thing you won't have to deal with me for long then." she muttered softly, intentionally lengthing her shorter stride to move farther ahead of Trax and Nim.

[Trax]

Trax looked at Keshani.

"Not sure how that's a good thing, but if that's what you want, no one will force you to choose otherwise.  When we're out of here, you will have options as to what you want to do, just try not to make any decisions until you've had a chance to hear about all of them."

[OOC: Okay, let's get this train back on track.]

[Keshani]

She was purposely forcing her attention AWAY from Trax and Nim and trying her best direct it forward to the dangers in front of them, so she didn't catch all of Trax's words.

She DID think she heard something about "options" and not making a decision too soon.

Her step faltered for a split second before she remembered to keep moving.

Until that point she had pretty much 100% assumed she would be dropped off at the first spaceport they came to should they make it off this deathtrap.

Why would any of them want a teenager trailing around behind them?

And she was okay with that. At least, she THOUGHT she was. She had lived her life on her own. She was used to that.

Options?

She took a slow breath settling her temper and her nerves.

Later.

She would deal with all of this later.

Right now she needed to focus on staying alive....

[OOC: Ok. Done.]

[Collan]

Meanwhile, Collan was doing his level best to sneak ahead and watch for danger.

[GM Craig]

You move on, and Nim closes and seals the blast door behind you. Around the corner, Keshani pops open an access hatch that leads to a maintenance passage. It's a tight fit, and you'll need to proceed single file. You crawl into the shaft, which leads you to a ladder, and up you go. It is an agonizing climb, with shoulders brushing against the sides of the passage.

Eventually you come out into a chamber housing a small power core. As you approach, Buzz beeps a warning. At Nim's quick word, you halt and Nighstade crawls forward.

The passage ends in a octagonal chamber about thirty meters across. The centre is dominated by a pyramidal power core. In the room, three technicians are currently working in the device. They are being assisted by two droids - floating spheres with various tool attachments.

[Actions?]

There is a small fork back a ways where you can retreat to discuss plans.

Only one of you would be able to enter the room at a time. It takes a full move to exit the crawlspace and enter the room.

[Keshani]

(OOC: assuming we retreated back a ways...?)

Keshani felt a momentary twinge as they entered the maintenance passage.

Please make this time go better than before..., she pleaded silently.

Taking a breath and following the Jedi into the passage things seemed to be going okay until Nim whispered out a warning, causing them to stop.

When Nightshade came back to report what he saw the teenage girl winced slightly.


"The back up power cores aren't very well protected. You um REALLY don't want to hit it...."

Her leg gave a momentary twinge.

"And, uh, those droids sound really similar to the one I ran into before. I'm not sure what would happen to the power core if one of those things exploded in there..."

[Collan]

Collan said, "So what if we roll a stun grenade in?"

"Or...Ch'lana...could you have the tech order the droids and take themselves away?"