Ciphered Holos

Meditation.

Breathe in and out, slowly. Let your thoughts fade away until only the most pressing remain. Focus on those thoughts and examine them, contemplate them, and let them fade away too until all that remains is your mind, your presence, and the feeling of the Force. The instructions for the subject ran themselves around Aran's mind so many times that she could hear them like a chanted litany against the backs of her non-existent eyeballs and still she couldn't sit down long enough to do more than practice breathing exercises.

Pulling her saber off her belt she slid the also familiar blaster from the holster strapped to her thigh, holding the weapons as if weighing them in her palms. With a rare display of coordination she spun the blaster one-handedly then reholstered it smoothly. Now she focused on the saber in her palm, tossing it in the air and catching it backwards, the emitter near the heel of her hand. Classically she knew some saber forms. She knew the stances, the poses, the structure of the art but it wasn't something she felt a drive to perfect.

She once had. She still felt like saber studies were where she was inconsistent in the application of learning. She would spend days researching medical problems, digging through ancient history, medical files, hunting for clues to a disappearance or trade deal but when it came to physical combat her reply tended to now fall to a blaster or smacking it with debris. And while smacking someone upside the head with a large chunk of something weas visceral and appealing most of the time it did tend to make problems. There was at least one Mandalorian who swore vengeance after being defeated by being bashed with a medical droid.

Dishonorable, he called it. Resourceful, the woman retorted. Then he'd shot at her again and she hit him with the droid again. It was, on reflection, probably the continued smacking of a 'skilled warrior' with a droid that made him more mad. At least he'd gotten revenge later, selling out one of her ident chips to a Imperial minister and causing her all sorts of hell. Ostillo. She'd remembered the Mandalorian still in case she ran in to him again. And in case he held a real grudge.

She really needed to sit down and have a talk with Shay at the rate she was going. After her short question to Tel-raan she had decided to take the Jedi's suggestion - sabotaging the information she gave to Syose before he got his hands on it - and accept the risk of injury and intentional harm.

Better that than he find he liked the study of alchemy, after all, and seek to master it. The best alchemists were known rarely by their great and terrible deeds and more for the legions of dead their creations left in their wake.

She paused, feeling out with the Force. She'd not heard from the Apprentice in quite some time. Perhaps she'd finally been discarded as a resource. She still had the dead stones to study, something she needed to retrun to in order to figure out what they really could be used for. Perhaps the Apprentice's leaving was related to the now disappearance of Eron.

In which case her ploys to save and block to protect him had... failed.

She set aside the saber, putting her head in her hands and trying once more to focus and think clearly, trying to settle her mind enough to properly meditate and see what the Force could tell her.