Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Ciphered Holos

Dropping the cube Book rubbed the side of her face tiredly. She'd alternated the study of the purple - she was told it was purple - crystal recovered and related to Master Vaar with working on her traps and tricks, wanting to build, slowly, an arsenal of defenses in case she ran in to Karker, Kneecapper or Slammy again.

Dimmy? No, she forced her mind once more to the dance pattern of the Rhodian rumba, leaning back in her chair. Karker. She had to think of him as Karker, and remind herself that she had no freedom until the implants were gone. Once they were gone, removed, and destroyed - once Sriia's were removed, destroyed - then they'd have freedom. But until then they were binding, small chains. Aaryn had been right that perhaps this was a distraction, a herring to keep their attention focused on something else, and she believed in the pits of her soul that Karker had another game he was playing, but she couldn't ignore the implants.

She couldn't ignore that her mind was not her own.

Book set the crystal down, hastily giving the Jedi present a bow before she turned on ehr heels and started to walk out of the Temple. Down the fractured but repairing ramp, out past the braced columns and doorway, and onto the courtyard. And from there, even if it raised eyebrows, she started to run from the grounds needing the physical release as much as she needed every other kind right now. She didn't seem to have a goal in mind but she needed to put feet to earth before she put navigational coordinates on her ship instead.

"Why do you allow it?"

She didn't want to know her reasoning, the reasoning that kept her here. Was she afraid to disappoint Shay and the others by letting her wanderlust get the better of her again? Was she afraid to take her fate back into her own hands, content to let someone else dictate her life? Was she going to sit there, letting her mind and thoughts be underhandedly re-written until they pleased someone else, until she wasn't a threat any longer, until she was passive and accepting? She stumbled over a tree root, righting herself with nary a flail of hands for balance, catching up the motion to turn sharply, still running then turning it into a leap over the fallen trunk of a tree.

"Why, then you won't be a threat anymore-"

Even in her current state confusion warred with the urge for action, wanting to find Dimmy, call Dimmy, get ahold of him, make another demand to remove them implants - except it was almost a pit of stakes against the man. Winning on their own merits instead of being given the answer was a victory she wanted.

She wasn't any closer to that victory after nearly two weeks on the once-peaceful planet.

In fact given how she was running full-tilt across the woods, darting between trees, she was having more trouble with the implants than she had realized or wanted to confess. She couldn't direct her anger at Dimmy, not without courting the inevitable slicing depression that only lifted when she changed her mind; she envied Sriia the freedom to hate more than she could put into words, things had progressed. She knew they were progressing past her ability to mitigate when she had been uneasy to recall how she'd been able to attack Dimmy. And that explanation had been gratefully interrupted by Aaryn's calm, peacefully focused words. She should have felt guilt at not being able to recount the actions she'd taken but instead she was.. relieved.

Sinking to her knees as she came to a halt near a deep-running stream Book knelt, putting a hand in the cool water. She had run out near to one of her old camping grounds she vaguely recalled, head turning to look the place over as best as she could. Even alone she aped the mannerisms of someone sighted, the ingrained habits so deep that she felt them like patterns to be followed. The same as she she pulled from the stream-bed, digging under the running water and the rocks until she pulled out a small fleck of metal. It pulsed, almost feeling alive in the Force until she whispered at it in that guttural tongue, the object going dormant.

Tricks and traps. They were her only defense right now, focusing her emotions on little knotted spells. Cantrips and rhymes. She needed to craft one like a rotting poison, carefully divesting all thoughts of who it could be used on while she shifted her position, settling in comfortably to work.

Once she was done she needed to try talking again to Shay to get to Nar, because she needed to fulfill her promise to the Order. She swore that - for however long the investigation in to Master Vaar took, Sanguine's resources would be at the Order's disposal. She was not going to let herself become a liar. She needed to pull her hunters in, reach out to a few new ones, review contracts, and see who could hunt up information on stolen information from the Jedi Archives.

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