scene with ~confrontfear.

[poeticforce]

There was a danger in celebrating too soon. But was it really too soon when it felt like they had grabbed their lives back from the jaws of defeat? The unnatural lightning attack had been sudden and devastating, and could have easily wiped out their motley fleet of rebels if it had lasted much longer. But it'd ended as suddenly as it started and they managed to recover, to get back into the fight and finish off the Final Order fleet that was as good as grounded.

It wasn't until they all began to regroup back at the base that they were able to take stock of who might not make it back. The lightning storm had been hell on most of the electronics and blew out the comms on several of their ships, so it was just assumed that if they couldn't get a hold of someone that was why.

But as people were celebrating still being alive, and trying to find their friends among the gathering masses, there was one particular X-Wing that seemed to be missing.

Hours passed and as night fell on Ajan Kloss there remained one very notable and concerning absence. No one could raise General Dameron on the radio nor could the X-Wing he had been flying be located, its last signal from during the battle. Surely he wasn't one of the casualties... was he?

***

The Resistance did score a victory at the Battle of Exegol, however, not all its inhabitants perished in the ship battle or the magical shock wave when the former Emperor was killed for good. A few Sith, having been elsewhere in the citadel, emerged as the chaos quieted. They were met with dismay when they found there was nothing in the amphitheater to be salvaged, no trace of their dark lord that could possibly be revived yet again.

Outside of the citadel the ground and ocean had become a graveyard of ships and their occupants. Yet there were still some traces of life among the wreckage. Nothing that could restore what all had been destroyed, of course not, but they had toiled in the darkness, in secret, for years. Revenge came in many forms, and they were patient.

A weakened signature in the Force led them to a Resistance pilot that had managed to escape his wrecked ship and swim to solid ground only to pass out not far from the water. His body was dragged back to the citadel. Down below, where they had painstakingly worked for years to recreate the Emperor through testing and experiments. A ripe mind filled with knowledge of their enemy would be a terrible thing to let go to waste.

***

It started not a month later. The Resistance had moved on from Ajan Kloss, needing a base of operations more suited to the task of centralizing and organizing their fresh support, as well as the difficult task of dealing with what should come next. A skeleton crew remained at the Ajan Kloss base, with intentions of the base serving as an outpost for the time being.

When no one could be raised on the comms after several hours, a few went to investigate, just in case it wasn't something related to the weather or faulty tech. What they discovered was a slaughter. All that had been stationed there were dead, most killed execution-style. Some looked as if they hadn't even gotten a shot off. It was all too clean and efficient to be the work of lingering First Order troopers.

The holovids from the security system revealed it to have been the work of a single person — masked and darkly dressed, who moved through the base calmly and almost as if they had familiarity with the location. Perhaps most troubling was not simply the kills, but that they had disabled the security systems, not destroyed them to prevent them from working. The system hadn't been hacked, but breached by using the proper access codes.

Within a few days' time there was an attack at another Resistance location, this time at the home of a small rebel cell that was working to destabilize a First Order occupied world. The security camera had been taken offline prior to the attack but the kills were done in the same manner.

Did they have a traitor within their midst? Had the scattered remnants of the First Order hired a mercenary in a last-ditch effort to wound the Resistance as much as they could before they were stopped? Or was something worse, something more horrible, at play?

Comments

[poeticforce]

"Stop that." he snapped, his grip tightening on the rifle as his eyes narrowed at her. The defensiveness was a reflexive reaction, though if asked he couldn't say why he was reacting that way. Or why her seeming to have familiarity with him, or at least who he was, was grating on his nerves. She was a name and a face in a file to him. Just another target, albeit an extremely dangerous one. There was no reason for her to know him or to talk to him like that; he certainly didn't know her.

Or did he?

There was a warning on the tip of his tongue, wanting her to stop talking like that, to stop saying his name like she had said it a hundred times before. But she kept talking and any remark he would have made died in his throat as his confusion intensified, clear enough in his presence if one knew what they were looking for.

That name... he knew that name, didn't he? Another name from a file but no, there was something more to it. Something more to her. "Don't you remember?"

His brow furrowed, as much from trying to think as from the pain that throbbed at his temples when he tried to. Details weren't important, the past wasn't important; the mission was important. This Jedi was just... just trying to confuse him. Some sort of mind trick? Yes, it had to be.

Poe tensed and did his best to brush off the confusion and wondering. "Stop acting like you know me, Jedi." he hissed, and stepped in closer as he tried to hit her with the butt of the rifle, intending to knock her out or at least quiet her for a few minutes.

[jedied]

She hasn't tried to mentally influence him yet, though it's next up on her list of things to try once he's not pointing a gun at her. Or it was, until he tries to attack. The Force gives her enough warning to dodge the blow and roll away from him as she instinctively pushes with the Force to try to throw him off balance as well. If he's going to use violence she doesn't have a choice.

Remember.

She focuses all her will on that command even as she scrambles to regain her feet and put some cover between them again.

"Poe, please. Try to remember. You don't want to hurt me."

She didn't want to hurt him, but her hand is already reaching out for the abandoned lightsaber as she says it.

[poeticforce]

Poe cursed, as much from her moving as from the shove he felt as surely as if it had been done by her own hand. He stumbled back but managed to stay on his feet, letting go of the rifle with one hand in a reflexive motion to try and catch his balance, subconsciously using the Force to do just that. It took him a moment to steady himself, though he wasn't able to make any sort of progress past that. Not when he suddenly felt a different sort of push, although one that could potentially throw him off balance just as much.

His free hand went to his head as he winced, the command seeming to echo in his skull. Visions flashed before his mind's eye, snippets of memories, but too quickly to latch on to anything. Flashes of color and sound and emotion.

Her voice seemed to echo, but was it really, or was he just hearing it from a different time and place? Did he really know her?

It hurt, though, the forceful tug on things the Sith had sought to bury and destroy. Not everything that could be remembered was welcome. A part of him strongly didn't want to remember anything that wasn't absolutely essential, trying to shield himself from the pain of what he had gone through.

He groaned, as much in pain as frustration, shaking his head hard as if that would settle all that felt off into place. As his attention focused back on her he saw her trying to reach for her lightsaber and he quickly aimed, taking a shot not at her but at the lightsaber to knock it further away from her.

"I'll hurt you if I have to." he hissed out, still rubbing his temple even as he strode toward her. But would he? Poe didn't feel as certain about it as he might have a minute ago. He was certain that he wanted her to stop whatever it was she was doing, and if she was going to fight dirty then he would have to as well.

[jedied]

"No. You won't."

Through the Force, she feels the shock of the saber being knocked back by the rifle pulse before she can lay her fingers on it, but she doesn't have time to wonder if the crystal's been damaged.

He's forcing her hand. She's less willing to hurt him than he is to hurt her, but that doesn't extend to the rifle he keeps threatening her with. She reaches out once more, this time not for her own weapon, but his; she yanks hard on the Force, with as much focused will as she'd once used on an entire ship. It's overkill, but she doesn't care if she catches the thing -- it can go flying across the forest for all she cares. She just wants it out of the equation before any irrevocable damage is done.

[poeticforce]

He was really starting to get tired of this Jedi constantly countering his words, acting like she knew him, like she knew what he would or wouldn't do. A part of him, the new part, almost could understand why the Sith had said she was so dangerous and why they seemed so determined to want her to suffer. Poe grit his teeth and might have had a snappy remark to fire back if his rifle wasn't suddenly being ripped away from his hands.

The action makes him stumble forward slightly since he wasn't expecting it, a hand reflexively reaching after the rifle as if he might be able to snatch it back though he only reaches normally. He loses sight of exactly where it ends up landing. That was fine, he could retrieve it after he's done dealing with her, assuming he had the time for it, as it was more important to keep as much of his attention as he could focused on her. His gaze did flicker the direction her lightsaber had gone, but then focused squarely on her.

Hand-to-hand combat seemed like a terrible idea with a Jedi. It was something he was trained in however, and that he felt confident in if it came to that. But for now that would sit as a last option, if a swift escape from the situation didn't seem possible and things shifted pointedly into the life-or-death category. His orders weren't to harm her, certainly not to kill her (somehow he knew the Sith would be upset if he unintentionally robbed them of that), but the whole situation had gone sideways rather quickly and now... well...

"For someone who agreed to be taken prisoner, you're not being very cooperative, Jedi." he stated with mild aggravation as he straightened, holding his ground but not making to approach her — or the direction of their weapons — at least not for the moment.

[jedied]

"I didn't say I'd be taken prisoner. I said I'd come with you. Just you."

She needed to get them both away from here before the First Order decided to send in reinforcements. They had to know this was a gamble. She can't understand why they'd even risk using him if they were't going in for any kind of subterfuge. Just to twist the knife a bit more, she supposes. To gloat about having turned two of the Resistance's strongest assets against one another, and claiming them both in the end.

She can't let it happen. Better that they both die here in this forest than corrupt what they'd both stood for.

It doesn't need to come to that yet, but they do need to get away.

"I'll let you fly my ship. There's another asset in it for you if we can't come to an agreement."

BB-8's waiting for her. It's a risk, to be sure, but if the droid doesn't spark some recognition, he can at least send a covert message.

[poeticforce]

"For what, a joy ride?" His sass had a sharper edge than before, though at least it's still there.

It was a ridiculous thought to him, and one that was starting to make him wonder if she was just trying to distract or delay him. He wasn't confident in that line of thinking though. When he had come across her she had seemed more likely to be getting a sense for what had happened here, not specifically looking for the perpetrator.

Unless of course she had backup somewhere near enough to contact using her abilities rather than traditional means. An idea he wondered slightly more about when she mentioned there being someone else, presumably on her ship.

"Stay out of my head, Jedi. Let's start there." he replied gruffly, narrowing his eyes at her. Not that he could see what kind of 'agreement' they could possibly come to, given his orders were to attack another Resistance location after he was finished dealing with her. The Sith also didn't value any of the others as much as they did her, as far as he was aware, so he didn't immediately see how another of the surviving Resistance would prove valuable. "Just what kind of agreement are you proposing?"

[jedied]

His snark has her rolling her eyes in an entirely familiar fashion, and for a moment a flicker of something like relief crosses her features. Her friend is alive. His memory has been tampered with, but he's here, standing in front of her, and if it comes down to it she knows she can knock him out and get away. But the goal is to get away with him, and that's a whole heck of a lot easier if she doesn't have to drag him back to the Falcon.

"You can take my ship wherever you want once you've heard what I have to say, even if that means back to the First Order. I've got an astromech back there with a lot of intel on it, too. It's more valuable to you than I am. Come have a look; I'll stay out of your head."

At least until we get there.

She doesn't like the idea of rooting around in Poe's head, but it's going to be necessary, she's sure, to undo whatever was done to him. She's just hoping that a look at some familiar surroundings and one familiar droid will rattle something loose for long enough to give him pause.

[poeticforce]

One eyebrow lifts as Poe gives her a slightly incredulous look at her suggestion. He doesn't care about whatever kind of ship she's flying or what astromech she has with her. None of that is important to the Sith so by extension it's not important to him.

... But it might be easier to get the upper hand on her if there was someone else, even a droid, distracting her. Potentially fighting in closer proximity wasn't necessarily a great risk, however knowing that she's without her lightsaber makes it marginally less risky. Jedi leaned on their tools; surely the odds were decent that she might not have as much experience fighting hand-to-hand.

What precisely he would do if when he got the advantage of her he's not sure; leave her to wake up alone, wondering which of her friends were in danger, he supposes. If he could reasonably secure her he might try to take her back to Exegol but he's not leaping ahead to that just yet. One thing at a time.

"Fine."

Poe straightens, not crossing his arms though that sort of energy is definitely present. His hands itch for the rifle, and he briefly considers reaching for his pistol but refrains. Better to leave it be and not encourage her to try and toss that who knows where as well.

"Lead the way. And you can start with whatever it is you're so determined to say while we walk."

[jedied]

It pains her to leave her lightsaber behind, but she can come back for it once she's got Poe taken care of. She scratches her left wrist idly, surreptitiously activating the tracking beacon she'd brought with her just in case. It would be a few hours before anyone could reach her here, but it was well enough hidden under her armwraps that unless he had reason to try to bind her wrists, it ought to go unnoticed. If worse came to worst, Finn would follow. He'd be able to get through where she'd failed, if she failed.

She's not intending to fail.

"Do you know about the remaining Sith holocrons? As it turns out, there's more than just the Wayfinder -- which I have, by the way. They're difficult to create, and almost as difficult to find unless you have a particular affinity for objects with Force signatures."

None of it is untrue; he's free to search her thoughts to confirm as much.

"I've found the location of another. It would be priceless to any Sith devotee left alive, especially with Palpatine gone. And I know how to open them. Imagine the bargaining power you'd have if you brought one back along with me."

It's a gamble -- she's not sure how hungry this version of Poe is to impress his superiors. If there's anything of that showoff nature left behind. She thinks there must be. He would've wanted to go above and beyond, to bring back the impossible. The last Jedi and a lost artifact?

"You could have whatever you wanted. Your freedom, if you chose. Or a promotion."