Break Me Out

[Dire Wolf]

A bright light winked on in the dark room that had been repurposed as a temporary holding cell; long shadows were cast on the ground for a brief moment as the light seared through her night-acclimated vision. Ava's eyes shut tight to minimize the pain from the sudden illumination, only for the world beyond her closed lids to darken once again. A few moments later, the light winked on. And off. The cycle lasted only a handful of seconds in it's entirety, but once a handle was gained she tentatively opened her eyes once again. Keeping the center of her vision away from the light, and thus the door at the other end of the room, was a tad vexing but far better than dealing with the constant battle of night-vision and day-vision.

Ava began to shift her position from prone to a kneel when a sharp pain pierced her side, just below the ribs. A nasty bruise. Not anything that the martial artist hadn't been used to, but still an annoyance that made her hiss through clenched teeth. Only hours ago the ship she'd been on was attacked by the same damned pirates who'd chased her halfway across the galaxy. Lead by some bad jedi who wanted her as an apprentice, probably. Creep. Every part of her wanted to snap the door open and rip the bastards heart out, but she also knew that nothing would please him more than her giving into anger. 

While giving into the wrathful part of Avadrie may have been pretty damned tempting, she wasn't about to give the guy what he wanted. Instead, she released a deep exhale before rising to a standing position. Durasteel tipped boots clanked against the deck plates with each step towards the only door into the cell, her eyes still averted down to avoid undue pain from that damned blinking light. The pirate's taking of the vessel had been short and brutal; she'd have ejected from the vessel had they not been so far from a hospitable world. Instead she was forced to fight the bastards crew, crushing bodies that crossed her. 

At least until she ran face first into him. Vibroblades, Ava could deal with. Knives were easy. But lightsabers? Iago hadn't gotten to that part of her training, where she could disarm someone of a damned laser-sword. So, rather than fight, she ran. Ran only to be ripped back by the Force, and skull smashed with the pommel of a lightsaber. Ava's eyes slid shut after she pressed her palm flat to the door and simply felt; a pair of guards flanked her room. Uneasy? No shit. She ripped through their friends like they were nothing, and could put a hole in durasteel. Things were fuzzy beyond that, though; sensing stuff wasn't exactly her forte. Punching stuff was. 

Teeth began to worry at her lower lip as she considered just how to go about the escape attempt; escape pods were useless out in black space. She was on a different ship, presumably. Things were just... bad. 

Really bad.

[Ghostie]

The HWK-545 Light Freighter gave a lurch and a shudder, it’s entire hull giving a threatening groan as the forces of physics bashed themselves against the ship. The freighter yanked rather violently from hyperspace, prematurely ending it’s jump not all that far from where it had started, just outside of the Chromell system. As the Gem of Aldera came to a stuttering stop, the vessel pivoted forward on it’s nose and to the side somewhat, as if breaking after a particularly long stretch of speed. Behind the ship, a faint trail of vapor was leaking out into the vast blackness of Space, with a green tinge of coloring. Most apt travellers would recognize the substance as hyperdrive coolant, which had been exposed to the cold vacuum.

“This KARKIN’ thing...!”

Gaeriel hissed under her breath at no one in particular as she whipped back and forth across the freighter’s cockpit, answering the blaring alarms and adjusting the ship’s systems after such a failed hyperspace jump. The Jedi Knight supposed she was lucky that she hadn’t been sent into a star or supernova, or collided with a piece of debris at faster than light speed. But being stranded just outside of a planetary system was not much better. Clenching her teeth, Gaeriel stood in place, just in front of the pilot’s seat as her hands flew across the control console. She had just been rolling off to a deep sleep, curled in the chair behind her as best as she could in her flightsuit, as the Gem of Aldera had fallen out of hyperspace and thrown her unceremoniously to the floor. And needless to say, the woman hadn’t woken up happy.

As a few of the alarms started to wink out and fall silent against the crescendo, Gaeriel attempted to toss her head back and move some of the long, gold waves out of her face so her narrowed eyes could see better, but she made little progress in that regard. Puffing a sharp exhale out of her mouth, she tried to blow one particular strand that was being a nuisance out of the way, but it worked just as well as tossing her head around. Aggravated, the Jedi let her hair go until she could could get the Gem under control. Finally squaring away the ship’s computers and shutting off the flow of hyperdrive coolant, Gaeriel perused the control board for any more blinking lights and alarms, but she already knew that there were none. Slowly sitting back into the pilot’s seat, she rested her head in her hands as her elbows fell on top of the controls.

“ ‘Go find some pirates’, they said. ‘It’ll be easy’, they said…”

The Jedi Council had known that the Gem of Aldera had it’s issues when they had assigned her this ship for this particular mission. There had been some pirates operating in the Chromell Sector for awhile, now. And the way they alluded the authorities at every turn suggested that they had some sort of foresight, which meant a mole in the law enforcement, or a Force sensitive was leading the crew. Either way, Gaeriel was sent under the guise of a Spacer, and told to track the crew down. Except that the particular HWK-535 she had been assigned was a relic, and it still suffered from wounds of the war that ended only a couple of years ago. But some apprentice helping with ship maintenance in the Temple’s hangar bays said that the freighter was Space-worthy, so here Gaeriel was; trapped with a leaking hyperdrive.

Just as Gaeriel was contemplating her next move, and just what threatens and derogatory terms she would use when she found a certain apprentice back at the Jedi Temple, there was a sudden presence in the Force. It was as if a large, dark shadow had fallen over the Gem of Aldera. It wasn’t particularly strong, but it was everywhere. Just as the Jedi looked up and out of her viewport, another ship fell out of hyperspace. It was long and narrow, with a distinctive vertical wedge on it’s bow. Judging by the hull and the pock marks and scorching, it was old. But then again, every Hammerhead Class cruiser was old, these days. The ships were designed nearly three hundred years ago. Looking at it for just a moment, Gaeriel’s hand slipped to cover her mouth as she looked at the ship, slightly bewildered and quickly planning.

It was the exact Hammerhead she was looking for.

It hadn’t taken the pirates long to register the fact that they were practically sharing their space with the relatively small HWK-545. But by that time, Gaeriel has shut off all but the most necessary systems and opened up the hyperdrive coolant valve, making the ship appear as if it had been abandoned in a hurry after a disaster. After that, the Jedi Knight had found one of the many hidden caches that the Jedi had cut into the floor for various purposes, and squeezed herself inside, pulling the thin durasteel overtop. Given her lithe frame and short stature, it was an easy maneuver for the Jedi Knight, and she executed it like a well thought-out plan. But so far, nothing was going according to plan. Her hyperdrive was crippled, and the pirates were going to be boarding her ship any moment. If she hid now, and didn’t raise an alarm, she might be able to get a message out to the Royal Security Forces of Naboo, and let them know where their long-hunted pirates were exactly. Then reinforcements would just be a short hyperspace jump away.

As the Jedi Knight sat in the smuggling hold with only the warm bath of a green glowstick for company, next to a small but powerful homing beacon that she had found in the gear she had stashed in the alcove. The woman braided her blonde hair to keep it out of the way, and listened for the tell-tale sounds. Tractor beams grabbing the Gem as it groaned once again. The air hissing as a docking clamp connected with the freighter. Two pairs of feet muffling across the floor panels, under which Gaeriel was hidden. One stopped just above the Jedi Knight, she could watch the durasteel above her given a few times as the feet tested the floor. Reaching out with the Force, the Jedi Knight felt the pirate’s presence, and pressed the words into thought that there was nothing wrong with the floor, whispering quietly to herself.

“Go away, goawaygoaway…”

One tense instant later, and Gaeriel heard a muffled grunt as the crewmember carried on. Soon enough, the two pairs of feet had left the Gem, and after a few minutes, Gaeriel was sure that no one was coming back on board. Slowly, the Jedi Knight lifted the floor panel, wide brown eyes the only thing visible from the smuggler’s hold for the moment as she scanned the surrounding area. Setting the panel down gently next to the opening, Gaeriel pulled herself up and out of the hold. Twisting the homing beacon and activating it, which would link directly with the Naboo Royal Security Force, the Jedi Knight dropped it back in the opening, and covered it with the durasteel panel once again. But there was still the matter of the dark presence she had felt. Even with the Security Force on their way shortly, the darksider needed to be dealt with.

And what was more, now that the Hammerhead was closer, Gaeriel felt another presence in the Force. Not as strong as the dark Jedi, but still there. It was a sort of grey, a bright spot in the shadow of the ship, but still in the threat of being swallowed up, if not helped. Perhaps whoever it was could be turned to help Gaeriel. She could feel the distress from the Gem, hurt, and anger as well. Grimacing, the Jedi Knight checked the blaster at her hip and her lightsaber at her belt.

This just became an arrest and a rescue.

[Dire Wolf]

"Who do ya suppose this girl is, and why're we guardin' 'er?" Of the two men that stood outside a non-descript apartment door, the larger of the two shifted his weight to better distribute the heavy durasteel breastplate that covered it. Damned thing weighed heavily on the shoulders after a few hours, and kept enough heat built up beneath to keep the skin feeling prickly. That minor discomfort was nothing compared to the odd sense he got from standing outside a stupid door to keep a slim girl from wandering the halls.

The smaller of the two leaned his weight against the wall rather than just shift around, and began to pick at some dirt that lay beneath his nail. Once the darkness was removed, he flicked it off from his fingers, "Some Jedi, I dunno. She damn near kicked Kruk's head off, though." In spite of his words, the man seemed oddly calm. His blaster rifle hung on a three-point sling at his belly, and quickly his forearms rested on it as though it were some kind of table. She wasn't getting through the door any time soon, and the boss had already begun to track another ship. Things were cush, on this assignment. No reason to treat it like life or death.

"Wait, she did that to Kruk? They don't think he'll ever use that eye again," the big man inched away from the door, and his hand found the grip of a blaster carbine. Suspicious eyes fell to the sliding durasteel door as though she may rip it down at any moment. He'd been about to say something else when the pair of men lurched towards the bow as the old refitted Republic Cruiser slipped out of hyperspace about an hour early. The pair of men smiled; looks like the boss found a mark, and they wouldn't have to board.

"Nice, looks like we're getting a fr-," WHAM! the pair threw themselves well away from the door as an earsplitting crash ruptured from it. Wide eyes grew wider still when they saw the door billow outwards. A second slam quickly followed, and a third. The pair leveled their blasters on the door as the fourth dent split half the door from it's frame; and a fifth sent it into the opposing wall. Blaster-fire split through the halls, though the bolts of red and green hit nothing but the bulkhead as they sailed through the darkness.

Moments later, a lithe blur slipped out from the corner. It preternaturally wove around the blaster bolts before finding the larger man, and kept him between it and the second jailer. A flash of movement passed before the blaster was pulled against it's sling so that the big man's torso craned down towards the shorter figure, only to have an iron fist slam against the corner of his jaw. A splatter of blood flew against the opposing wall to be quickly followed by a scattering of teeth against metal. A howl of pain began only moments after a flurry of fists rippled against his chest; each strike caused another rib to snap beneath it's herculean force. The lightning fast attack was ended with a breaching foot to the big man's knee, and a ruinous hammer fist to the temple.

The first man's lifeless husk had barely crumpled to the ground when the girl reached the second man, however rather than another quick assault she merely snatched the barrel of the carbine forward only to twist her torso. Ava's jailer was thrown off of his feet at the pivot point, and he'd only hit the ground before a boot smashed downwards into his throat. If there'd been particles of his spine bigger than a penny, she'd have been surprised. 

--

Pain. Such exertion caused a ripple of pain to well up in Ava's side, where the Dark Jedi had sent a boot as she desperately tried to breathe from all fours. Once the pair of guards were dead, she practically fell into the bulkhead with a hand cradling what had to have been a broken rib. Tears would have welled up in her eyes if she let them, so rather she merely allowed a measured breath to leave her pursed lips. Hopefully they were in some sort of planetary system so that they could use the escape pods, but first she had to help that bright spot. That light in the darkness that inundated the vessel. It was probably her ticket outta there.

[Ghostie]

The urge to simply sweep through the Hammerhead class cruiser with her lightsaber drawn, cutting down any pirates and other sort of ruffians that Gaeriel came across had been great. It was, in all reality, a sound tactic. Leave no enemies behind you for an ambush later, or to raise the alarm. Something she had learned on sabotage missions during the War. Yet, at the same time the Jedi Knight had a sinking feeling that doing such a thing would raise the alarm, what with this dark Jedi leading the crew. He was probably already on edge, if he could sense her in the Force, but the Jedi Knight was already rather apt at masking her presence. Gaeriel had to be smart, and stealthy. She had to sheath her lightsaber, for now, and rely on the Force.

Quietly stepping towards the airlock where the cruiser was attached to the Gem of Aldera, Gaeriel stood on one side of the door, and peered around into the larger ship through a small viewport. There was only one guard stationed on the other side of the portal, lazily leaning against the bulkhead as he cradled a blaster rifle in one hand. He’d be easy enough to dispatch. Raising a gloved hand in the gesturing motion, Gaeriel threw her fingers further down into the interior of the Hammerhead cruiser. The Weequay guard perked up, hearing what he thought might be a stowaway or intruder, but was merely Gaeriel using the Force to make him think that he heard something out of the ordinary. Smiling a bit to herself, the Jedi Knight quietly opened the airlock once the guard was gone, and continued into the ship in the opposite direction in a low crouch, peeking around every corner and intersection she approached.

However, aside from the one guard, the Hammerhead was as quiet as a tomb. And in retrospect, the aged cruiser almost looked like a tomb. The years had obviously not been kind the ship; more than a few panels had been pulled out of the walls or ceilings on Gaeriel’s path, perhaps for maintenance work or whatnot, but they had never been replaced. A few were leaning against the bulkheads near this openings, but some were missing entirely. A handful of lights flickered across the halls, in desperate need of attention as their life came to a slowly grinding halt. The light they cast off erratically gave the empty halls an unsettling feeling that crept up into the pit of Gaeriel’s stomach, but the woman did her best to brush it off. After all, other than a few lazy and bored guards that were easily avoided as the Jedi Knight pushed herself against one wall or the other for cover as they walked by, the ship on Gaeriel’s intended path was empty.

Empty, save for the second Force-presence she had felt. It was growing ever closer, and as soon as the Jedi Knight figured that she might find them at any moment, there was a loud thud, as if something was hammering the thick durasteel of the Hammerhead’s bulkheads. It was muffled, as if hidden behind a wall or door, but the hammering reverberated throughout the ship’s hull, and Gaeriel could feel it under her feet in the floor. It was heavy, and purposeful. The Jedi Knight froze where she stood as the first hit came, then a second, and third, until a total of five resounding hammers had hit whatever metal was receiving it’s punishment. After the fifth, there was a loud crash as if the metal had finally given away. But it wasn’t until the sound of blaster fire that immediately followed until Gaeriel snapped back to attention and rushed for the other Force-user.

She could tell it had been this second Force-sensitive individual that had been pounding on the metal until it had finally given way. That meant that it had to be someone who knew how to focus their powers and call on the Force. Someone like a Jedi, perhaps. A desperate Jedi, to be pounding their fists on durasteel. Or maybe even a Warden of the Sky. Punching a door until it came down seemed like their sort of style. It wasn’t a Sith, as this presence wasn’t as nearly dark as that of the dark Jedi that was onboard, and at the other end of the cruiser. Gaeriel would be able to tell once she found the person.

Turning down the hall and finding the brig, a room that seemed to well worked over time again, Gaeriel happened on the scene of the most recent firefight she had heard. There was the durasteel door, of course, laying crumpled against the opposite wall from its hinges. A few pirates laid around, looking beaten and generally defeated, a few to never move again. And then leaning against the bulkhead, just before the door, was a young woman. She was a bit taller than Gaeriel, or at least the Jedi assumed so. It was hard to tell with the younger woman being hunched over, but everyone was taller than Gaeriel, and the other woman seemed a bit more meaty, as well. Her jacket and clothing suggested someone who was honed and well built for their frame. She had messy brunette hair that fell around her face, and blue eyes that were hidden behind puffy bruises and other lacerations across her face.

“Easy, there…”

Gaeriel came to the woman’s side, as the younger woman clutched at what the Jedi Knight assumed to be a hurt rib cage. Helping her down into a sitting position on the floor, Gaeriel returned her unlit lightsaber to her belt as she crouched in front of the beaten and bruised escapee. A gentle hand on each of the woman’s upper arms as Gaeriel helped her sit up, and the Jedi Knight gave a bit of a grin.

“... Warden of the Sky? Yeah, you guys are the only ones crazy enough to punch your way out of a cell.”

There was a definite draw on the Force around the Warden, as energy was being absorbed by the escapee. Gaeriel figured that it was the only way she was still on her feet, in a figurative sense at this point. While the Jedi Knight was not as well versed in the healing arts as some, she nonetheless helped and poured what soothing, warm energy she could into the younger woman’s efforts. If it could not outright mend, Gaeriel’s efforts could at least help ease whatever pain she was feeling. But before she could do much, the hairs on the back of the Jedi Knight’s neck stood on end. She could sense the approaching danger. More pirates, undoubtedly hearing the Warden’s breakout.

“I hope you can at least stand and run. There’s more trouble coming our way.”

Standing to her own feet, Gaeriel turned and looked at the door as more guards came from down the hall. Thinking better than to enter the room, they took cover on either side before firing in, not bothering to check and see if any of their comrades were still alive. They were being cautious, and Gaeriel wondered how much trouble this young Warden had given them before. Between a large, heavy durasteel door and the fact that these pirates were willing to try and put her down without questions, Gaeriel would’ve given a little smile, if she wasn’t being fired upon. Mind tricks were not going to get out of this mess, this time.

As the fusillade of angry red laser bolts hailed down around the Jedi Knight, she ran for the door, dodging and weaving around the fire, her lightsaber still at her belt. Stop just before the door and dropping to the metal floor, Gaeriel fell on her back and folded legs, using the Force to propel her slide through the open portal and just behind the two pirates who had taken up positions behind it; a Weequay and a green skinned Twi’lek. Reaching her intended mark on the floor, Gaeriel jumped up in the blink of an eye, her violet lightsaber blade rising with her as she spun around, and sliced both men across their torso and through arms, their armor providing absolutely no protection against a lightsaber as they fell, slightly smoking from their wounds.

Stopping for a moment to look for the young Warden, who was still inside the brig, Gaeriel was snapped back to the matter at hand as more blaster fire chased her from down the hall. Spinning on the spot, the Jedi Knight raised her blade to defend herself, deflecting bolts that would have otherside found their mark harmlessly away and into the bulkhead of the cruiser.

[Dire Wolf]

Ava had been poured against the curved bulkhead in a moment of weakness; her body had been broken against the Dark Jedi's onslaught. Fortunately the dog hadn't turned his lightsaber on the girl who'd caused him so much trouble, otherwise the tall warden likely wouldn't have been ambulatory. She'd found breathing just a little easier after allowing her body to catch up with the superhuman feats she'd accomplished; just in time, too. A feminine voice called out from behind her, "easy there"

Alarm caused her eyes to widen and body to spin, but she was still prone and against the wall. Had she not been so wounded, a quick kip-up would have brought the girl to her feet in the blink of an eye. Instead, her body began to move just as the words registered in her mind. Calming. Not alarmed or angry. The source was a diminutive figure, and the center of that brightness she'd felt before.

Surprise continued to play across Avadrie's face as Gaeriel continued to speak. Correctly guessing that Ava was a Warden of the Sky wasn't a big leap, given the destruction the blonde had seen. What the real leap was, though, was that she knew that they existed at all. Wardens weren't common like Jedi. Most of the people she'd spoken with treated them like the figures of tall tales. Protecting spacers from pirates and government alike. Rather than confirm anything, however, she used the woman as a point of leverage to help herself up. "Who're you?"

To say that Avadrie was a flerkin' wreck was an understatement. Broken rib not withstanding, her face looked as though she'd gone through ten rounds of shock boxing with a nary a break. Superficial cuts lay at the crest of some of that swelling, and her neck bore the familiar bruise of a person who'd been choked half to death. It still reflected in the raspy tune that was carried along with her words. "I can do more than that," she fired back quickly. Ava wasn't the type to hang back, nor was she a damsel in distress. These pirates had killed her master and practically tortured her; they were gonna get a tune up at the very least.

However, the woman moved far faster than Ava could track. Faster than the Dark Jedi who'd captured her. By the time that the Warden began to move, the first pair of brigands had already fallen to her violet saber. Wide eyes tracked the eggplant blade as it arched through the air, easily parrying bolt after bolt that was sent after the Knight. Wide eyes quickly narrowed, though. Rather than hide behind the Jedi's skirts and wait for an opportunity to move, she darted to the side and sprung from the convex wall. Sharp pain ripped through the girl's side as she slid around the flurry of blaster bolts. Splitting the enemy's attention was their best chance for survival.

At the last moment, Avadrie lunged forward into a forward roll that placed her between a pair of humans that had placed themselves at the doorframe. A handful more were within the room, each behind cover. One fluid motion brought her steely hand up and around the barrel of the blaster carbine, but rather than rip it from the man's hand her fingers dug into metal and plastic until the receiver was ripped in two. Surprise was writ across the man's face before she ducked down to hurl her shattered half of blaster into the other human's head. It struck true, and left behind a crushed skull in it's passing. In her movement, the girl slipped to the side of the other human for a powerful elbow to the kidney, and as he hunched a boot lashed out at his knee. As he collapsed, a steely hand grasped the back of his armor's grommet just in time to pull him close to her more slender form, and for another flurry of blaster bolts to rip into the defenseless pirate.

Damned cutthroats were so predictable. Even so, her face winged in pain from all the movement. She couldn't keep up the fighting for long, not without dipping further into the Force and risking mental exhaustion.

[Ghostie]

As the lasers flew down the hallway towards Gaeriel, she only blocked this that came straight for her, not bothering to reach out and deflect the ones that missed back towards the group of brigands, and correct them for their mistakes. In fact, the Jedi Knight did not even bother to deflect those that did come her way back towards her assailants. It took too much effort, and letting the red, angry bolts glance off of her lightsaber and harmlessly into the durasteel wall or the floor was much easier. Nonetheless, she was pinned down where she was, and that was something that had to change soon.

There was a break in the firing as a few of the pirates reloaded their weapons, and Gaeriel used that moment to spring. She rushed down the hall, much faster than they obviously expected as a few of the guards shouted in surprise, and a few bolts flew wildly towards Gaeriel. Instead of blocking, this time she simply dodged around the blasterbolts, and let them fly away without a second thought. The closer the Jedi Knight came to the group, the closer she grew to the wall on her right, until finally she placed a foot on the surface while in mid-stride. Trying not to break her pace as much as she could manage, Gaeriel used the Force to shift her momentum and center of gravity, letting her run up the wall about half of the distance towards the ceiling, before she leapt off and into the pirates, purple blade spinning away.

One of the pirates lost both of his arms as Gaeriel came down into the group, his weapon clattering to the floor shortly before he himself fell. Rolling to break her fall, Gaeriel came up into another pirate with an uppercut, the alien’s torso sliced from hip to shoulder. The Jedi Knight turned to face the rest of the group, and saw that a few were splitting off towards the brig where the young Warden of the Sky was, before Gaeriel’s head was slammed with the side of a blaster rifle. The woman went tumbling away, sprawled on her back as she hit the floor. Her lightsaber was lost from her grasp as she hit the durasteel, and she heard it clatter away into some close corner, deactivating as it went. Head swimming from the blow of the weapon and the impact on the hard floor, Gaeriel tasted her own blood, and felt one of her eyes growing puffy almost instantly. In a moment, there was a pirate on top of her, and the Jedi Knight started to wrestle the man for his rifle while he jeered at her.

“‘Ey boys, lookit this one! Think the boss will lemme - ” The man’s words were cut off as Gaeriel summoned the Force, and flung him towards the ceiling. The man hit with a resounding thud that reverberated throughout the hallway. Keeping a hold of the blaster rifle, the Jedi sat up a bit, and took aim at the pirates that were still in the hall.

“Tell ya what, why don’t you guys look at this instead.” She said with a bit of a bite as she fired three times, catching the last of the pirates in some sort of fatal or incapacitating way. Leaning back against the floor for a moment with closed eyes as she tried to rest her head, Gaeriel only grimaced as klaxons started to sound throughout the ship, bathing the halls in ear splitting noise and red lights. Someone had seen the Jedi spinning around with her lightsaber, and now she could feel the dark presence seething as it started to come closer.

That was when Gaeriel remembered the young woman in the brig.

Rolling over and discarding the blaster rifle, Gaeriel used her arms and legs to push off of the floor and into a standing position. She collected her lightsaber, holding it one hand, unignited yet ready, and slowly turned into the room where she had left the Warden of the Sky. There were brigands strewn all across the floor, with limbs bent in the wrong directions and chests caved in. One had a collection of blaster burns across his torso. Gaeriel knew that Wardens were skilled in unarmed combat, but this was still impressive for someone she judged was barely past her teenage years. Eyeing the slim, tall black-haired girl, Gaeriel figured she couldn’t go much further.

“Naboo Royal Security is on its way with a detachment of starfighters. My ship is docked just forward from here. I suggest we get there before we’re blown sky-high.” She pasued, and closed the distance between the two of them. Lightsaber still in one hand, Gaeriel slipped the other under the woman’s shoulders. “Lemme help you, at least. It looks like you can barely stand.”

[Dire Wolf]

A low buzz that had once existed in the background of her consciousness had since become a cacophonous roar in her ears. Mix the damned droning with the sudden bleating of a klaxon made it difficult for the girl to think, let alone focus on pulling more energy into her wounds. Each heavy breath gave her shoulders an urgent pace to their rise and fall, and a thin sheen of sticky sweat caused stray strands of brunette hair to stick uncomfortably to her. Once it was clear that the immediate threat had been dealt with, Ava's hand once gain returned to her side. "Just go," the Warden protested as the Jedi slithered an arm under her shoulders, "I can keep up. I'm fine."

Of course, she wasn't, yet had no intention of delaying their escape based on foolish notions of pride. Instead, she merely released a disapproving noise while leaning much of her weight against the shorter Jedi. Each step, even supported as she was, sent jolts of winging pain through the girl's side. Combined with the buzzing in her ears and a steadily growing migraine, and Ava supposed her ability to fight was degrading by the minute. While her previous display was impressive to the layman, beating up on idiots was relatively easy. Especially with simple movements and quick reflexes. It'd been the crux of her study over the past decade, after all. 

But even simplicity had its limits. Another room of pirates would probably kill her. The appearance of the bad Jedi who killed Iago would probably kill her. Given Avadrie's most recent luck, he'd probably best the woman beside her in a challenge, too. At the very least he'd be dead by the end of the day, unless that flerkin' lightsaber could protect him from the vacuum of space, too. Speaking of her torturer, the supreme darkness that had pervaded the ship had only approached since the klaxons began. It moved with little speed, but utmost determination and fury. "He's coming," once proud eyes glanced down at the stout blonde, now wide and open. Ava couldn't handle what lay in store, should she be captured again. He'd intended to force her into changing through pain and manipulation, and she rather liked being her. 

"I don't have a laser sword. I'm dead weight," her voice was light and wispy, as though spoken out of breath in spite of her now steadied breathing. Stamina had always been one of Ava's weaknesses, or rather gauging it. Iago took every opportunity to caution her against putting all her strength into every task, but rather to meet a challenge with like energy. If she was pushed, pull. If she was pulled, push. Merely act naturally and with fluidity. Perhaps if she'd listened better, her muscles wouldn't ache quite as much, and her wounds wouldn't have been agitated by all the movement. 

"I can fly, if you need it. I'm not a bad pilot," her glance down was rewarded with a shape out of the corner of her eye. Tall and imposing, shrouded in shadow save for a baleful orange glow. A musclebound man that must've been taller than any other man she'd seen before stood in pirates garb and a wrathful expression. Had his face not kept the pallor of a corpse, and his wiry beard been taken better care of, she supposed he might've been handsome. Of course, that thought hadn't crossed her mind since the wicked torture.

"It's him....."