Welcome to the Jungle...

[Talau the Ever-Lurking]

((don’t ask about the title…I really don’t know.))

Still damp hair clung about her shoulders, neck and face, dripping with water every now and again as she shifted in the pilot’s seat to adjust the settings of the Consul to prepare for atmosphere entry and landing. Of course, she’d dried it with a towel for the most part after the shower, but that didn’t keep the excess water from collecting at the tips of those thick auburn waves, almost causing the shortened hair to curl in places…almost. Clinging to the back of her seat was the little droid who, while not quite as affable as Ayer, she was beginning to consider a partner, of sorts. ”In fact,” Aunna thought to herself as she gazed out silently at the emerald jewel that was Dxun, ”I should find a name for her…calling her 13 all the time just doesn’t settle right with me. Maybe Eressea? For some reason that seems fitting.”

Reaching up, she keyed the ship’s internal com so she could inform their impromptu visitor, Ss’ss’th as she’d learned his name to be, of their entry into Dxun’s atmosphere. ”We’re coming up on Dxun; entering atmosphere in…less than two minutes.” Clicking off the com again, she settled back and strapped herself into the harness, the brush of 13’s tail behind her head as it curled around the base of the head rest to help keep her in place making the woman smile and chuckle to herself quietly. One final scan over the controls before her, followed by a last look at the curve of rich, verdant, greens that filled the viewport, and she dipped the light freighter into the atmosphere of Onderon’s moon. Quick eyes flickered between the readouts and the viewport, one hand moving to adjust the deceleration equalizer slightly, allowing her to better feel the ship’s entry and motion through the thick feeling and muggy atmosphere of the jungle moon.

Breaking through the cloud cover they had come up on, the vast green of the jungle spread out below them for miles in all directions in a sea of leaves and plants. Rising up from it, or spiraling around in the sky were the vast forms of skreevs and drexls, or the smaller ‘clouds’ of birds rising up into the sky after being startled by the predators on the ground. It was…a surprising cacophony of life for the woman’s sharpening senses to come up against, even so far up in the sky as they still were. While Aunna couldn’t say she’d been to Dxun, or ever had much reason to research it, she had done so before they came (at least in part) and the information she’d gleaned had been…interesting. ”Are you certain this is a good idea, coming here with what is essentially a very large python and…well…Vex? Or coming here at all? While I agree that this is one of the few places the Republic is bound to search for you, there are quite a number of other things that would like to eat you on this moon, should you happen across them.”

Aunna simply snickered slightly at that. At least the little droid hadn’t decided to give her the odds of survival this time around. ”It isn’t Vex I'm worried about, you know that…and you’re not so ignorant as to not know why, either. Ss’ss’th…while he’s a slight concern, he did save my life, and for some reason I just…I don’t believe he’d intentionally harm me. The beasties here though…I’ll admit, they’re a concern, but that might be a bonus in the long run. I don’t know yet.”

”I hope you’re correct in that thinking, Aunna…” 13 still had her doubts, honestly, about the snake, and certainly about Vex, but there was little she could do at the moment to dissuade her partner. Besides, through all the different stories and the emotions attached to them, it was difficult to discern just what the dark jedi was about…yet. Cautious of him as she was, 13 disliked making uninformed or biased decisions…she would just have to watch and learn before she could honestly say the dark jedi was (to put things simply) ‘good’, ‘bad’, or something in between. With those holographic wings a pensive shade of brown around the typically tan centers, she clung to the back of the seat a bit harder as the Consul finally slowed and stopped it’s forward motion to settle down in a small, bare bit of ground. Gazing out the viewport, she was relatively glad that it wasn’t raining…at the moment…but from the very nature of the moon, she doubted she would be so lucky for much longer.

Uncurling herself from the seat, she hopped to the other one and perched herself on the head rest, gazing out into the corridor, watching for the arrival of the man they’d just been talking about. No doubt he’d be here sooner rather than later, anyway. Aunna, on the other hand, was busy shutting the systems down. While she was swiftly learning to discern Vex’s presence from that of Ss’ss’th (now that she had someone else to match against), there was an odd feeling of him always being present now. That, however, wasn’t the strangest part…no, the strangest part was that the sensation would increase as he neared, and decrease as he left but it never fully vanished. It hadn’t occurred to her yet that the source of this feeling might be the gift he’d given her, which now hung at her side, and the crystal within it.

[Vex]

Vex heard the announcement over the intercom, but he'd felt that they were close long before that. After all, she'd brought them out of hyperspace and had switched over to sublight engines. Plus...he could feel the verdant life on that strangely beautiful and wickedly vicious planet that they were nearing. It was a vibrancy on the edges of his sense and only grew more so until he took measures to filter through what he was feeling in the Force.

Wrapping his robes about him, he made his way towards the front of the ship. Perhaps he should have strapped himself in as was appropriate, but he was hardly worried. If something could potentially harmed him, he'd be warned of it well-enough before hand. Boots whispered silently over the flooring as he entered where Aunna and the droid were. He saw the little nuisance perched there on the co-pilot's headrest. Flicking his hand, he put everything he had into that stunted telekinetic ability. It probably wouldn't do much more than upset the little automaton's balance, but it would be something.

He didn't feel like dealing with Aunna yelling at him for doing something more viscerally satisfying to the creature...like seeing how good its power surge compensators worked. Having only come in on the tail end of that conversation, he only heard what 13 had said. Feeling particularly snarky at the moment, he responded simply. "She most likely isn't, droid."


He glanced out the viewport, seeing the verdant jungle that greeted them. "At least we are here. I can be rid of half our reptilian misfits."

"If I'm fortunate...the jungle will take care of the other half as well."

[Deceit *Drinker of Jawa-Juice*]

The constant thrum of the ships interior systems was like a lullabye for the snake. He had slept calmly for the majority of their journey, listening to soft thrumming, instensified by his own acute sensations that all of his race had. His sleep had been pleasant, melodic even. His dreams of a far away desert planet a distant reminder of a time and world lost to him long ago, of a past that would forever cause a rot in his heart. He tried to focus on the joy of those times; but slowly, that too was seeped away, for sometimes the good times were worse than the bad.

He shook the thoughts away, raising his head and quietly remaining in the cargo hold. Slowly, the recent events came to him, and he reminded himself where he was. He was in a foreign ship, after agreeing to travel with two companions ( for only a short amount of time ) to the planet Dxun, their hospitality stemming from the battle at Carida, when the great spiders had struck and threatened Aunna's life, where Ss'ss'th had decided to help her. He remembered the battles, and was pleased with his actions. Not everything that Ss'ss'th had done he was proud of, but among the things he'd done right was saving Aunna's life.

Aunna was a human with a great heart. He was still very unclear as to why she was out here, so deep in a jungle and away from society, but he knew that whatever her purposes were, she didn't deserve the fate that those spiders would deal out. She was strong in heart, but she was also strong in power. Her knowledge of the force was not great, but she had faired so capably against her opponents. He suspected that any normal being would have been destroyed by the great arachnids, but it was evident that the pair he traveled with now were no normal people.

Vex, too, was very powerful. He could sense it, and it was proven later in combat. It was no small feat to kill such large beasts, and Ss'ss'th could appreciate that. Perhaps if Vex had not been there, the spiders could have killed Ss'ss'th, and he may still have died after the fight with just the few he took on. Luckily, Vex was strong in not just physical and mental combat, but also with his healing, and although the process had been one of the most excruciating things that Ss'ss'th had ever experienced, it may have saved his life.

Ss'ss'th could feel the rumblings of the ship as they entered the atmosphere, and that sent him into motion, he great body slithering in a constant S shape, the soft skin of his belly making quiet scraping sounds as he traveled across the hallways, his head passing through a turn in the ships halls' before he even got his entire tail through the doorway.

He traveled to the bridge, getting confused for a few moments and taking a wrong turn, but eventually discovering the other two in the building, lead by the sound of voices. Instead of putting his entire body through the doorway, Ss'ss'th merely poked his head into the bridge, "We are here, at Dxun, then?" He asked, his droning voice filling the room. "I hope I am not interupting?"

[Talau the Ever-Lurking]

The…flux…in his presence near her was felt far more easily now than it had before their time on Carida. Certainly she had noticed it before then, to some degree, but she hadn’t been aware of the change quite so much as she had become aware of it on that planet. Of course, the lingering feeling of him there, near her constantly, only served to heighten her awareness of his approach, the soothing whisper of that presence growing into a soft hum, then a vibrant, if muted (most likely by his preference to shield himself from detection), melody of sensation against her senses. He must not have been fully shielding himself if she could feel him…Aunna knew better than to believe that she’d be able to sense him through that thick cloak of nothing he liked to pull about himself, and he was silent as a cat. If he’d wanted to creep up on her, he could have. Easily.

Yet another tremor rippled along her senses, however.

It flamed through that hushed presence discordantly and had her turning swiftly from her work at the controls toward him, uncertain of just what this sensation meant coming from him. It was obvious enough as 13 nearly tipped back, her tail curling more tightly around the base of the headrest as she dropped to use all four claws to cling to the seat. The edges and veins of those holographic wings dyed themselves a mixture of orange and yellow, the solar scales along her back and the tips of her claws crackling slightly with electricity. Vex had certainly startled her with that push, causing her central systems to react to the surprise and follow-up of anger with a change of color and immediate activation of her electrical dischargers. Put simply, it was an ‘instinctual’ reaction that both showed her displeasure and worked to make her a less desirable target for further attacks. That was the idea behind the programming, anyway.

Composing herself once again, the dischargers were shuffled into the background programs once again, that crackling dieing out once more, though the irritated orange and wary yellow remained in her wings. Aunna, not quite as amused as Vex surely was, narrowed her eyes at him and growled something under her breath in olys corellisi before turning back to the controls and shutting the power down the rest of the way. ”It seems we’re in agreement then, Mr. Praetor,” she stated icily and curled her body around the headrest more securely so she could unwind her tail from it.

”Oh enough you two, really…”

The half grumbled, half amused statement comment had her standing and gently prying 13 away from the headrest. Finally giving up her relatively safe perch, 13 swiftly clambered up Aunna’s arm and onto her shoulders as the woman shook her head and snickered at Vex’s final comments. ”What a solitary man you are…I could see you being a hermit, and being happy about it.” Ss’ss’th’s presence, a continuous vibration of long ‘tones’ and ‘chords’ in the force that painted an image of distant desert sands and hot sun, grew steadily more clear to her, mixing oddly with that of Vex’s darker presence, which reminded her of the night sky filled with stars or of the quiet stillness of a long rain on Corellia. At least, that’s what it was when he wasn’t angry.

Soon enough the sound of slithering reached her ears and she turned her face to Ss’ss’th, nodding once at his question. He was still a spooky big snake, but the fact that she had seen him before in her dreams, and that he had helped protect her on Carida, helped her not fear him quite so much. Offering a smile to his second question, she shook her head slightly. ”Not really…but if any of us want to get out of the cockpit today, you’re going to have to back up Ss’ss’th,” she replied with a chuckle and cued the ramp to lower.