Bushwacked

[Dire Wolf]

Dxun was a wild, untamed place. Full of flora and fauna that even some of the strangest planets in the galaxy would call oddities of nature. The drexl being one of those very creatures. While there weren't many of them on that particular hell of a moon, there was more than enough to cause trouble with both republic and mandalorian efforts there.

Which was partialy why Tali took that particular mission to Dxun. Most other blades rode against the Sith. The "real" threat. The ginger Jedi was not so quick to throw herself against some dark sider's blade, though. Besides, if it was a challenge she wanted, every mandalorian was an elite trooper... as opposed to the paltry sum of Jedi Hunters and Sith Warriors on the Imperial side.

Though, to be honest, the Republic's need to fight the children of Mandalore wasn't exactly her main reason for going. Nor was the challenge, or hunting the fauna. The realization came to her as she ducked beneath a low hanging branch, her digitally patterened armor plates clinking together as she did so.

She had a small very small an iota of interest in the Mando'ad that saved her. Kar'eth.

Tali's current mission was to help the Republic soldiers of the 3rd battalion 5th infantry (3/5) search for and destroy the Mandalorian Rebels HQ on the Devil's moon. Devil moon it was. Even with the sealed and pressurized suits, she lost some of her best men to disease. Even with State of the art tech, she lost men to Boma and Zakkeg attacks. Had the 3/5 not had her powers at her disposal, they probably would have been annihilated by that point.

Despite her distinct Jedi-ness, she'd become a part of the close knit brotherhood that the 3/5 called their own. The men and women had grown to respect her lead from the front mentality, and she their heart and downright ferocity. Part of her wished to give up her saber and join the infantry to lead them officially, but that was her slightly less than intelligent, impulsive side.

"What's that?" the woman whispered to herself as she caught a glimpse of a grand structure through the thick foliage. The squad sized patrol at her heel replied only with silence and a few looks. They had been trained to communicate with hand signals, and keep their distance in case of an explosion. Communicators were well and good, but easily tapped into.

Both of her arms slid down at a 45 degree angle to make her outline look something of a triangle. The men behind her rapidly regrouped, one moving forward to take over the pointman position, the heavy repeating blaster gunner moving to her right, and his assistant to her rear at an angle to form a diamond shape within her fireteam.

Affectionately called, the wedge formation.

After signalling the other three fireteams and the machine gun (for lack of a better term) team to move, she did so herself. They crept from the edge of the wilderness into a great lakeside field, and at it center the great black pyramid loomed... brimming with as much dark side power as it looked like it would.

Tahlia had a bad feeling about this.

No mandalorian could pick her out from her soldiers, save the brown stripe down her right arm and along the crest of her helmet that signified patrol leader. Her armor and blaster rifle made sure of that much. Though, the woman did have a cylinder at the small of her back, roughly two feet in length and with a few buttons at each end and the center.

[Rabbit]

[OMGPLEASEDON'THURTMETAL! *coughs* I have two major assignments left to knock out for this week and Dire has been awesome enough to help me keep my sanity, by plotting with Tali and Kar. So...here's me. Plotting. And keeping my sanity before my brain implodes.]

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Well...Dxun was definitely different from Ordo.

That was Kar's "official" opinion of "the Devil Moon". And he was stickin' to it.

His unofficial opinion was another matter all together. Unofficially, Kar thought that Dxun was a blight on the galaxy. Unofficially, he wondered if Mandalore the Preserver had been a few spikes short of a hyperdrive, when he had decided that Dxun was an acceptable place to colonize. Unofficially, he thought the Mando'ad should give Dxun back to the Corellians, because they were apparently one hell short of a full nine.

Kar had been on Dxun for the total sum of a week and he was already wishing for the arid desert and baked nothingness of Ordo. He was already battling the 'Devil's Rot' between his toes - a reality that irritated the fastidious Miraluka to no end - and his nose hadn't stopped burning since he'd landed on the planet. The entire world smelled like rotting vegetation, rotting carcasses, and rotting feet. Layered on top of the pungent and pervasive aroma of rot, was that of sweaty, unwashed bodies, pickled flipdarter (a staple of the Dxun diet, apparently) and wet leather.

Kar had lost his lunch within five minutes of being introduced to Dxun's...unique...odor. Thankfully, no a single one of his fellow Mandalorians said a thing about his show of "weakness". Mostly, because every last one of them had done the same within minutes of their own arrival.

And not a single one of them had a Miraluka nose. It was bad enough, Kar imagined, for a "normal" nose. But, for the nose of a man who depended on all of his other senses to compensate for the lack of eyesight? It was pure and unadulterated hell.

And if the smell of Dxun was bad...the feel and taste of it wasn't better, either. Everything Kar touched felt slimy...including his own armor. The jungle moisture was pervasive - to the point of being its own entity, really - and it left a slippery film over everything. As for taste? Well...smell and taste were inseperable. Kar tried not to think too much about the origins of the foul taste that sat continuously at the back of his tongue. If he did, he knew he'd puke. Again.

A part of Kar wanted to rebel against the orders that had placed him there. Another part of him wanted to whine about why he was even sent there to begin with. But, it didn't take a genius (or a medic) to figure out why his presence on Dxun was crucial to...well...everything.

Medics were in short order within the Mandalorian ranks - especially among the Mandalorian Special Ops. There were only three or four other medics stationed with him on Concord Dawn and they were stretched thin as a result. One was back on the Special Ops base as permenant staff. Another had taken his place on Ordo, for the on-going humanitarian relief there. Yet another had been sent along to augment the effort on Mandalore.

That left him, 2nd Squad (of Charlie Company, 75th Elite Regiment), and all of exotic Dxun.

And while the four stalwart men of 2nd Squad carried out their Mand'alor's war against the Republic forces that would see all Mando'ad throughout the galaxy beaten into bloody submission, Kar fought a war of a different sort all together. It was a war that almost made him wish he could pick up his beskad and take a few frustrations out on an enemy made of flesh and blood.

He got to wage war on disease, on skin-eating rot, on infections, on a million microscopic microbes that would destroy every last Mandalorian on Dxun if given their perfidious way. Something a minor a papercut could bring a soldier to his deathbed in hours, if left unattended. The moist, rotten climate was a breeding ground for nearly instant gangrene and Kar couldn't think of any other place in the galaxy where he had to worry daily about things like ricketts, rabies, cholera, leeches, malaria and scurvy.

Besides infection, malaria was the worst. Trusty Mandalorian armor could protect a man against Republic blasters, but it was worthless against the tiny - and deadly - Dxun mosquitoes. Kar was only seven days in and he'd already lost five soldiers from the 75th - every last one from some complication attributable to malaria.

He really was tempted to write a very polite missive to the Corellian government, asking them to take their thrice-damned hell back.

At the current moment, however, polite correspondances with a government several hundred par secs away was not an option. At the current moment, Kar was picking his way on a patrol with Echo Squad and trying gallantly not to kill himself by tripping over the thrice-damned vegetation.

That was the other problem with Dxun. The fauna was so thick, that it was hard for Kar to distinguish one plant form from another. His Force Sight could only differentiate so much and it was meeting its match on Dxun. If his presence on patrols wasn't such a matter of life-or-death for the men of Echo Squad, he would have insisted on staying put on the base several miles behind them. As it was, he hoped like hell that he didn't give away their positions by bumbling about through the underbrush like a drunken drexl.

His squadmates - Manda bless them - had solved the majority of Kar's troubles by putting him in the middle of the single-file formation. As he took care of them, so they took care of him - the soldiers in front of him provided a definitive "beacon" for him to follow and while it wasn't practical to hack-and-slash through the foliage, Kar could at least follow in his vod's footsteps.

It helped, too, that the vod placed strategically in front of him was Iridonian and broader - by far - in chest, shoulder, and general size. The slimmer Miraluka was able to trail along in his vod's wake without too much trouble - though the occasional tree root still tried to beak his ankle.

There was also another, more...unusual...reason for him to accompany the squad on patrols. It wasn't a reason the average Mandalorian would accept as a viable contribution...but they were special ops, after all. Not a single one of them was "average", even by Mando standards.

"Baar'ur. Check," the point-man's deep voice rumbled in Kar's ear.

It was their code. Kar picked his way carefully after his Iridonian vod and carefully opened himself up to the myriad of lifeforms around them. He wasn't trained in the Force - not like a jetii, at least - but the ability to sense other life forms and tell them apart, was a crucial survival skill inherent in nearly all Miraluka.

Besides his skills as a medic, it was made him nearly irreplacable on a patrol.

At first, there was the usual - vegetation, insects, reptiles. A few warm-blooded mammals here and there. Most were sleeping off the heat of the Dxun day; the jungle around them felt drowsy. Except...

There. Right there. Ahead of them. Kar nearly stumbled and it had nothing to do with a tree root snaring up his boots.

There was a dark, oozing wound in the Force in front of them. Bile bit the back of Kar's throat and his sweat suddenly felt like ice against against his skin.

Evil. It whispered to him, it's lure seductive and unsettling. A brief stinging underneath the the edge of his right vanbrace, near one of the thin veins in his wrist, was the only thing that kept him from drowning in the lure of the Dark Side.

Kar slapped his wrist, distracted.

"Baar'ur?" Point pulled his attention back into a grounded reality; Kar blinked beneath his helmet, momentarily disoriented.

That's when he caught it. He would have missed it, too, covered as it was underneath the overwhelming sense of the encroaching Darkness. Kar froze immediately and threw his arm up, fist clenched, out of well-trained instinct. All of his vode - in front of and behind him - froze instantly. He could feel every last one of them snap to high alert.

The medic counted. One. Two. Three. Six. Ten. Fifteen. Eighteen. And...

"Osik!" he hissed.

"Report," Point was understandably impatient.

"One click, at position three. Eighteen count," Kar paused and swallowed - they weren't going to like what came next. "One jetii."

What he didn't add, was that said jetii felt...odd. The medic's instincts prickled. He slowly pulled his Force Sense back into himself, hoping like hell that the other - and far more trained - Sensetive hadn't felt him probing about. With any luck, they wouldn't see them for at least few vital moments...and maybe in that time, he'd be able to figure out why that jetii's imprint in the Force felt so damn familiar....

[Dire Wolf]

(short, yeah, but I dont' have much to say. x.x)

Fireteam One was barely out of the jungle before Tali signaled a halt with an open palm to the sky. There was something wrong. Very wrong. Those crimson eyes narrowed behind the visor of her helm for a moment before closing completely. Her senses fanned outward at her will, but with that came a cacophony of noise that nearly deafened her to everything else. That great, dark temple also had its own sick note to play in the Force... one that could have blinded her if it was the only thing impeding her senses.

After a few moments of that chaotic mass of life, and being able to sense nothing but that, her eyes flashed open. There was something out there, and trying to figure out what it was would only get her and her squad killed. Keeping a stony grip on her rifle and her profile low, she moved to the back of the patrol. "Where are my gunners at?" She waited until a pair of those monstrous repeating blaster cannons made an appearance before speaking again. "I need you to skirt around the edge of the clearing and set up an overwatch. If something comes out of the woods sporting anything but a republic logo, light it up like a Force day tree." She turned to the company's forward observer, "find a spot. I think its looking like rain, Sergeant Sarack."

Sarack's visor seemed to smile with his sharp nod, and the pair of two man machine gun teams seemed to carry their crew served weapons with a bit more zeal than before. Before long the five men were off, and all that remained was her twelve man fire team. "Shoot first and ask questions later, check?" she turned and made a quick hand signal that told her men to move forward. they stood in sequence, and slowly made their way from the edge of the woods.

It may not have looked it, or sounded like it, but the woman was prepared for the worst. Beneath that digitally patterned green armor her muscles were taut and ready to spring forward. Her skills with a saber weren't far from unsat, but she more than made up for it with her skills in protection and telekinesis.

And there was a whole forest full of projectiles and makeshift shields.

[Rabbit]

It all happened so fast - too fast, really. One second, the jungle was its usual, deadly-peaceful self and the next second...

All haran broke loose.

Movement shifted through the brush and bracken in front of them. Looking back, Kar would never be certain who fired first. But, in the end, it didn't really matter who started what - all that mattered was that the vod to his left suddenly crumpled to the ground without a sound and they were now down to three men.

Actually...more like two.

And one blind medic.

Kar didn't even need to spend time on the one man down. The Force within the sentient was undeniably gone. Snuffed out in an instant. From the blood that sprayed his pauldron, Kar surmised that a blaster had found its mark in the exposed neck between helmet and gorget.

This was always the "tricky place" for him - the place he found himself in a firefight, torn between soldier and medic. This was where being a Mandalorian changed the "traditional" ethics of war. Was he a medic first? The Republic would say "yes" and so therefore, his part in the battle would be well-defined. But, as a Mandalorian, the answer would be "no". He was a soldier first...a medic, second.

They were already one man down. Playing the non-com medic would be the quickest way to eliminate any need for Kar's medical abilities, that was for certain. They were nearly twenty-to-three.

It was time to pull out the beskad.

Even with the help of Force-Sight, Kar couldn't aim for osik. As a result, he fought primarily hand-to-hand or with melee weapons like the beskad. Of course, getting up-close-and-personal with a melee weapon against long-ranged rifles was a bit tricky...

The Iridonian to his right grunted deeply in pain and Kar didn't waste any more time. The Republic soldiers had definitely decided to take the "spray-and-pray" method to heart; most shots were random and fired for several different points in the jungle in front of them. Kar counted at least five or so positioned directly in front of them - the others were prowling about in a slow arc on either side, the jungle foliage almost perfectly hiding their digital patterned armor.

"Find that jetti," Point barked, as he took a knee behind a tree for shelter and started calmly squeezing his trigger.

Kar counted two lives snuffed out in just those few second between the taps of Point's curled finger. He spared a quick scan of the Iridonian - he was injured, but not badly.

One more life, gone. Kar tightened his grip on his beskad and shifted his weight as he opened up his Sense and tried to locate that thrice-blased jetti. He had his back up against a tree and blaster bolts scored the dirt at his feet, kicking up bits of dead lizards and rotted leaves. His vod were taking heavy fire but giving back as much as they got. The medic shifted his attention toward the pincer that was slowly creeping toward their left flank.

Three....Four...Six... he counted the bodies silently, as he sensed them drawing nearer.

They were good. He had to give them that.

"Right flank," he warned Point, before shifting his weight toward the front of his booted toes.

The Darkness from up ahead of them loomed over everything, casting a strange pall over Kar's senses. Everything seemed muddled, as if he was trying to sense things from a great distance. As if he were sensing things between one side of the planet and the other.

He shook his head slightly, as if to clear his mind. The Dark Side clouded everything...he tried to find the jetti again...but it was if she had slipped into the shadows between the trees...

She...

The realization startled Kar. The jetti was a she...

He blinked. And that's when a figure shifted in cover of the jungle's branches, directly in front of them. Kar didn't even pause to think - the enemy had engaged.

He prayed to Manda and swung downward with his beskad, in a blow that was meant to cleave his opponent from shoulder to hip....

[Dire Wolf]

All hell broke loose.

Press, press press.

Tali could feel the tap of the rifle against her shoulder as it discharged a bolt of plasma. Granted, it was worth nothing as the three red bolts went wild... but it still gave her a sense of power. Primitive as it may have been. Her brethren in the infantry, however, were a great deal better. The two repeating laser cannons had gone to work, one splurting out six seconds worth of firing before letting up, only to have the next one begin firing. Talking guns was one of the more effective strategies. It was a shame that the mandos had found some cover, and her men were dropping like flies.

Her fingers slipped underneath the seal and ripped the helmet off of her head as she walked forward. A wave of heat and humidity instantly assaulted her, and that rotting smell seemed to physically knock her backwards. None of the men present had a nose half as strong as hers. Her eyes began to water and her skin was instantly sweaty, but she pressed forward all the same. While doing her best to avoid using her nose to breathe.

That arm curled up and hurled that plastoid helmet at the nearest mandalorian. Alone it was nothing; she wasn't even very good at throwing, but with the Force... she could shatter a skull with a pencil. As that helmet flew, her hand still extended towards it, she projected a telekinetic blast that sent it rocketing forward. The helmet slammed against the mando's helmet, shattering and knocking him off of his feet. Tears rolled down the woman's face as she felt the lives of both her men and the mando'ad wink from existence. It was never something she got used to. It was no matter, though... Tali still walked forward, using her hand to casually deflect any bolts sent her way.

But there was another coming, Tahlia sensed and saw as much. The glint of steel behind the foliage, and the semi-strength of a potential force user. Mandalorians were no Dark Siders by any means, but they were far from push overs. The vode launched himself from his cover, trying at a brutal slash that would cleave her in two cross ways.

Being naturally quick helped some, it seemed, as she leaped backwards. His blade soared through the air where she had been not a blink before. Tahlia was not a lightsaber duelist by any means. Fighting someone nose to nose was simply not her style... she far preferred to hang back and support the people that did, though. Thrice damned mandalorians were too good for her to do that, though. She had to actually get bloody in this one.

The shards of her plastoid helmet rose from the ground and sped towards the man without delay. It was unlikely that one would pierce his thick armor, but the gesture would hopefully slow him down all the same. Her hand called to the saber at her back shortly there after, and it slapped the leathery glove that covered her hand within moments, activating in a brilliant display of blue light.

<<Surrender, Mandalorian,>> she said in a choppy mando'a. It never hurt to have at least a rudimentary understanding of the language of your enemy.

Right?

[Rabbit]

Fierfek!

Kar instinctively recoiled as he felt the sheer power of a trained Force user unveil herself in front of him. He could see her shorter form glowing in the Force in front of him, her brightness a stark contrast against the jumble of jungle vegetation. He heard the unmistakable sound of her lightsaber as it flared into life and winced - this was either going to hurt really, really bad, or it was going to end his life.

Either way, he wasn't getting out of this confrontation without some amount of significant blood loss.

Pieces of something shattered across various points of his armor. One jagged missile embedded itself in his hand, as he moved his beskad in the hopes of blocking whatever it was that she had sent toward him with just a flick of her hand. It cut deep and he could feel the blood well and spill over his fingers. It made his grip on the beskad hilt slippery and Kar quickly switched hands.

He wasn't quite ambidexterous, but he could at least hold his ground with his left hand. Though, he'd never gone southpaw against a trained jetti...

<<Surrender, Mandalorian,>>

Her voice echoed eerily in the back of his head and Kar merely snarled in response.

Another life blinked out of existence behind him - he couldn't tell if it was his or theirs, but 2nd Squad was down to two. That much, he could tell - it was just him and Point. The medic tightened his grip on his beskad and shored up the fraying edges of his resolution.

If he could just take the jetti out...

"Get out of my head, jetti," he growled, not knowing or caring if she could actually hear him.

He ignored the little voice in the back of his head that cried out in warning. Her voice...her voice was...familiar...

But, Kar had no time to focus on what it was about her that bothered him. He was surrounded by death, overwhelmed by the Dark Side that pulsated in the jungle just klicks away. His right hand stung from a piece of embedded metal and his body suddenly felt hot and oddly flushed.

And, Kar was irritated. Deeply, deeply irritated. Angry, even.

He swung at her again and sparks flew as his beskad met her own shining blade. The impact reverberated down the length of his arm, but Kar barely registered it. The "Battle Lust" as many Mando'ad called it, was taking over and all he cared about, was the destruction of the enemy in his path....

[Dire Wolf]

"Get out of my head, jetti."

The muffled growl gave her pause. Not because she felt some impulse to heed his order, but rather because the tone of them had been familiar. Was this man some great Mandalorian that she'd heard speak via spy drones or well placed listening devices? She doubted it. It wasn't necessarily a menacing thing, his voice, as many of the 'great' mando'ade were.

"Very well, Mando'ad," was all that the Jedi said as she held her lightsaber in something of a medieval low guard. The other emitter of her saber hovered just above her right thigh and the blade pointing upwards and at her adversary. The twist of her hands likely wouldn't be noticed by the Mandalorian, nor would the small 'click' that her saber made... she could barely hear them herself over the gentle humming of the lightsaber's blade.

Tali didn't need the Force to make her fast. She had her natural bone and muscle structure to thank for that. The hand that held the active end of her lightsaber stayed still as the other yanked the inactive end to the left. To form two lightsabers. Tahlia didn't posses the knowledge of dual wielding lightsabers, but the ability to detach one end from the other was a cheap and effective function for her weapon nonetheless.

Her left hand was held far from her body, and within moments a new star and the soft blue glow that followed exploded into existence. This time, though, the blade was facing away from the Mando'ad... not poised to strike, but for another end. She launched it through the air, those baleful red eyes tracing the blue as it made horizontal circles through the air. The blade almost seared all the way through a wide tree, close to the mandalorian, leaving only a small portion of the trunk to support it.

It did not.

Especially with Tali's power ripping it down.

The tree seemed to move with unnatural speed as the Force ripped the tree towards the deck... and towards the mandalorian butcher.

[Rabbit]

Kar was too intent on his target, to really notice what was going on. It also didn't help that he was horribly distracted - so much was going on around him. So much death. So much Darkness.

And, he did not possess the training of a Jedi, Miralukan or not. He couldn't see like a Miralukan Jedi could - to Kar, the world was shades of light and shadow. Anything that wasn't in his immediate focus was nothing more than indistinct shapes. And, he was a sensory creature, dependent on his other senses and on his senses through the Force.

He could hear the blasters popping off rounds in every second. He could feel the movement of armored bodies in the jungle around him. He could taste the blood, the death, the burning. He could smell the fear, the anxiety, the rage.

Most importantly, he could sense the lives around him, flickering like flames. His Force Sense was on the verge of being completely overwhelmed by the Darkness up ahead of them, as he didn't have the capability to completely shut it out or even divert his attention from it. And, because of that crushing Darkness, this was quite possibly the worst battle he'd ever been in before.

Before, he had focus - saving lives. This was really the first time when his attention had focused solely on survival, on fighting. Never before had he gone up in front of a fully-trained Jedi. Never before had he had to contend with a Darkness that threatened to consume him. Never before, had he struggled to see straight through a Battle Lust that threatened to dim even his Force Sight.

Another life flickered out of existence - Point was gone. Kar registered that loss dimly in the farthest recesses of his instinct, before he stepped completely into the jetti's trap.

He was completely focused on her, to the exclusion of all else. He didn't notice her sudden second light saber. He didn't notice her throwing it. He didn't see the tree. He didn't hear it snap under its own weight.

He was only intent on thing - her destruction. He swung his beskad in the same instant that his destruction started falling squarely toward his head. The weight he shifted forward on his feet to make his blow, was the only thing that saved him.

And, at that, just barely.

It was a few awful seconds before Kar realized what had hit him, before he registered the horrible pain, before he felt the horrible snap that dulled that pain into nothing. A crushing weight flattened him against the moist jungle dirt and the force of the blow knocked his beskad completely out of his hand. His buy'ce hit a rock and cracked; he could sense light pouring through the fissure in his visor.

Kar was trapped at an angle beneath a fallen tree. His back had taken most of the abuse and when he tried to lift his arm in an attempt to pull himself out from under the weight, he realized the horrible truth.

He was paralyzed.

His ability to sense his own injuries, however, were not. But, as he assessed the damage, something like panic welled up inside of Kar's mind.

His spine was snapped neatly in half. His legs, crushed. His right arm, broken. The armor across his back had broken under the weight of the tree and sharp edges had neatly sliced through his clothes and skin. He was bruised and bleeding inside. The least of his injuries was a broken lip, from hitting his buy'ce on the ground.

A shadow fell over him. The jetti.

Kar closed his eyes. He knew enough to know when the end had come.

He had always thought that when that moment came, he'd see his life flash before him, or something equally dramatic. He saw none of that. All he saw, as he lay broken and bleeding, was the memory of a woman who's face he'd never even really seen.

Somehow, it seemed fitting he'd find his end at a Jedi's blade.

Tali... he thought; curious that he would think of her, now.

There was something poetic in that, he supposed. But, now...well...he'd never know why he thought of her in the last moments. She was simply there.

Kar quietly resigned himself to his fate. He had gone down fighting; it was a good way to die.

[Dire Wolf]

Those baleful eyes never left the armored man as her free arm was raised high above her head. She could feel the man's mind, and its complete focus on her destruction. Her eyes darted towards the trunk of the tree, which made a snap that could probably be heard on Coruscant. The Mandalorian didn't move. Instead drew back to swing that ferocious looking sword at her.

The tree had begun to fall then, and made a cacophony that could wake the dead as it brought entire limbs of other trees with it. Yet he still didn't notice. Her bicep clenched under the strain of her will, which sped the trees descent into the deck. And the mando'ad. That was about when she sensed the flame of his compatriot's life being snuffed out by one of the blasts of the repeating laser cannons.

That blue star rose up to bar the way of his blade as it flew towards her, but the attack was cut short. He vanished under a blur of brown and green, and she was all but thrown off of her feet from the shock. Her insides felt jumbled up from the concussion, but she slowly stood anyways. Tali could still sense the man's life, and if he drew a blaster while she was lazing about...

He wasn't. After standing, and gaining her mind back somewhat, she could feel his brokenness. Many bones were broken or pulverized, his legs were flapjacks, and his insides were bleeding. But that was the least of his issues... his spine was broken. Even if she pulled him out and he survived, he'd be a medical freak show for the rest of his life. If he had the coin to support it. Which she doubted.

Her lightsaber's pommel lifted above her head as she stepped towards the mandalorian, the point of the blade ready to drop into his body. While it was against the Jedi way to kill prisoners, and all life was sacred, she simply couldn't find it in herself to abide by that rule. It was too cruel. Her eyes drifted shut and her breathing began to deepen. If one was to kill, to execute, a man in such a way... she owed it to him to look him in the eyes first. Dropping that lightsaber down to a more casual position and bending down, she carefully pulled his helmet off. Which was about when she dropped her lightsaber, and her eyes grew wide as dinner plates.

"Kar'eth."

Both of the woman's hands raised up then, the muscles beneath her armor clenching with the strain, and lifted the tree off of him. It slowly floated away until he was clear, and she released it from her power. The tree fell to the ground with a unceremonious thud that shook the ground. She fell to her knees, and carefully rolled him to his side. Telekinesis was wonderful.... she used it to stop his bones from resetting. "I'm so..." she couldn't continue. Tears welled up in her eyes as she looked down at him, completely unable to believe that she destroyed kar'eth's life but a short time after he saved hers. "Sorry."

As if it were enough to cut it. "I'll make it right, Kar'eth. I swear it," she stood just as the surviving republican soldiers met her. All but the Forward Observer, the one repeating laser cannon crew, and a handful of infantryman remained. She looked over, doing her best to look stern and stoic rather than angry with herself. "We're taking this one back."

They looked between themselves for a moment, but knew better to talk back to a commanding officer. She sighed heavily... this was a spectacular failure. It took a few minutes, but they set up a stretcher and put him on it. Tali took the front, and refused to let another man bear the burden. It would be a long hump back to the LZ.

[Rabbit]

"Kar'eth."

Her voice sounded slightly tinny, as if it were coming from a long distance through a tunnel. It didn't help his ears were ringing a bit; Kar had the impulse to shake his head, but there was a blinding pain pulsing right between his eyes. That, and he wasn't so certain that he could lift his head and he didn't feel like finding out that more than just his arms and legs were paralyzed...

"Tali...?" he would have doubted the truth of her appearance - would have dismissed it as a near-death delusion - but there she was.

Crouched next to him, her signature as brilliant in the Force as he remembered. If he had eyes, he would have wept at the sight of her.

"You're a pain my shebs, jetti," he managed to wheeze; the weight of the tree was crushing, to say the least.

He would have said more, but it hurt too much. Suddenly, the weight of the tree lifted and then the earth underneath him reverberated as the tree crashed into the nearby foliage. Kar could breath a little easier, but his plight was still distinctly pathetic.

He had hoped to meet the charismatic little jetti again. But not like this. Not with his body crushed and his life ebbing slowly with each breath he took.

This was not the Mandalorian way of wooing a woman, that was for sure.

Wooing...? Kar caught onto the thought and focused on it.

Is that what he thought of the strange woman, his vowed enemy?

I must have hit my head harder than I thought...

Then, all thought stopped. He thought he heard Tali whisper something and he thought she might have touched him. But, somehow, she rolled him over onto his back and the pain in his skull became far more intimate for Kar than a lover. The world around him flashed bright, red hot in agony, and he knew no more.

[Dire Wolf]

Tali watched Kar'eth with a special kind of sadness about her face. He almost looked peaceful as he lay there, blacked out, and paralyzed because of her actions. He felt familiar to her... what other mandalorian felt like that? Her hand combed through her hair as he was loaded up on the stretcher, and picked up between two soldiers. She was a pain in his arse, or shivs, or whatever he said before he passed out.

She continued to silently watch him, wiping the thrice be damned sweat from her brow. It was so humid that everything seemed to have a slimy quality too it... even her hair. Tali shook her head at herself as she walked on, muscles tense and ready to draw a lightsaber to defend the haggard remains of her patrol. Hours seemed to pass before nightfall, and when she called a halt. After the wild repel posts were put up for the night, and a first guard posted, she turned to Kar'eth's broken form.

He was alive, but only just. She had ensured that he was set down out of line of sight from the main encampment. Which wasn't far in the jungles of Dxun. Kneeling down beside him, she removed her gauntlet so that she could actually feel him. The first and most pressing issue was the internal bleeding. If need be, he could live without his spine and his bones could heal... but he would die of bloodloss before the night was out.

Tahlia poured her power within his body, each torn vessel began to knit back together, and the ripped flesh mend into what it once was. She then shifted over to the broken bones in his chest, willing the bones back to their original position. The shards grew together to form their original shape, and then she began to heal his shattered legs and his other miscellanious wounds.

Then came the spine.

This whole process took hours and hours, but the healing of his spine (neat as the break was) took her into the early hours of the morning. The sun was barely beginning to break on the top of the forest canopy when she pulled her hand away, and slumped back on her heels. After a heavy sigh, the woman fell over on her side. Her face and hair was slick with sweat (well, MORE sweat), and beneath that armor her cloth underlay was just as drenched.

Tali began to pant as if she sprinted a marathon, and was far too exhausted to sleep. She could barely tell if Kar'eth was even awake, but she spoke all the same. "There. You're... fixed."

[Rabbit]

Reality filtered slowly through Kar's unconsciousness in fits and pieces. It was surreal, really...occasionally, his consciousness would surface, just long enough to register two things.

One: Excruciating pain.

Two: A strange and powerful connection through the Force, linking him and who he knew to be Tali.

Every time he "surface", a gentle nudge against his mind would send him back down. After enough times of almost coming to, though, he was able to piece together what was happening over the long stretch of what had to be hours.

Tali - jetti and sworn enemy - was healing him.

And that was all Kar knew, for a very long time.

----------------------------------

"...The general said not to disturb her."

An unfamiliar voice drifted into Kar's line of hearing. He stirred, unthinking, and then he went almost immediately. Out of shock or awe, or both, he didn't know - but he could move. Another voice diverted his attention, though and he turned his face up and over toward the sound of movement at his left (and quietly acknowledged his thrill at being able to move even just his head).

"Yeah...but I don't like how long she's been over here with that kriffin' Mandalorian. You don't think she's trying to heal him, do you?"

"Would be against the Jedi code not to heal him, I'd imagine. And what's he going to do, anyway? You saw how that tree went down on him. He's a paralyzed."

"Not if she heals him."

"I doubt even a Jedi could heal that sort of injury."

The sound of footsteps and voices dimmed - though, they didn't disappear entirely - and Kar surmised that they had just been passed by a roving watch. He slowly unfurled some of his Force Sense and took stock of himself and his surroundings.

Of his surroundings, he could tell that there was about a handful of Republic survivors just yards away, beyond a convenient screen of tangled jungle flora. Most were sleeping, exhausted from the days activities. The crushing pull of the Dark Side was a mere whisper, so they were several klicks removed from the sight of the ambush. There were four roving bodies circling the perimeter of the camp, but other than that, not a body stirred.

Except for one, however. One that was stretched out on the moist ground just an arm's length away from his body. The "glow" that distinguished her form was alarmingly dim, but Kar recognized her almost immediately.

"Tali..." he whispered softly and reached out for her hand.

For a moment he hovered, just shy of contact. But, then his bigger fingers curled around hers and a warm sensation flowed through him. He didn't know if it was her, or the Force, or what...but it soothed the residual aches that flared to life in his movement.

She was spent - emotionally, physically, and mentally. She was wrung dry in the Force, too - all of her had been poured into the process of saving him. Kar did a quick check of himself and was instantly humbled.

He was completely whole.

Exhausted himself. But, his spine had been knit back into place. His internal wounds had been healed. Even his head had been gently nursed back from the brink of a coma.

She, on the other hand, was a mess. Kar slowly rolled onto his side and lifted himself up onto an elbow, in order to have a better reach. He moved his hand from her own, to her forehead - she was a little too warm and soaked with sweat.

"Foolish woman," he muttered.

He meant to wake her up, maybe take off a few bits of her armor to give her skin and clothes a little "breathing" room. He meant to send her back to camp, where she belonged, where no one would ask questions.

But, as Kar pulled her up off of the jungle floor, she said something he couldn't quite catch...

And his body protested instantly at the movement. He collapsed back toward the ground and his arms wrapped instinctively around her. Now, she was pulled up against his chest, the top of her head nestled under his chin. Kar was too drained himself to do much to change such a compromising position.

And really, it felt good to hold a woman in his arms. It'd been too long.

He yawned and felt his consciousness slipping against his better judgment.

[Dire Wolf]

Strange shapes curled about within the smoke of her dreams. An asteroid field of eyes watched the descent of a fireball into a bucket of water, and she found herself standing at the edge of the road and the beginning of a rockey shore. The breeze was calm and the sun bright around her, though there were odd tanks boating around the ocean not far away from the shore. The girl turned to see great three story buildings that looked something like a military barracks shaped like an H, and for no reason at all... she began to run. Out of nowhere, she burst through a red paned glass door and continued to run down the hall of a school, passing lockers and students who didn't even notice she was there.

Realizing she was nearing the wall, the girl fell backwards on her arse and let herself slide to a halt, her feet pressing against the dull white plastered wall. After a few moments, she stood and looked around to see noone about, except for a trollish looking man dressed in military attire walking towards her with a special kind of intensity. Those baleful eyes blinked as he began to scream at her in a tongue she couldn't understand.

Yet, somehow she got "I'm going to kick you" out of the lines of gibberish, "go ahead. i'll just catch your foot." After a few more lines of loud and angry nothings, he tried to kick her in the chin. She simply moved her head to the side and caught his heel, "Now stop. Its okay if you're gay, nobody cares." He began to yell louder then, and she simply threw his foot back and closed a door that appeared. The last she saw of him he was falling to the black speckled tile deck.

Tali turned to see that same trollish man with a soft smile on his face, and an extended hand. Blinking, for some reason, she took it and shook. A peace offering. Though she felt something squiggling around at the base of her middle finger. After their exchange was done, she turned to a man that was somehow beside her, "he's still angry, isn't he?" "yep. Look at your finger."

Her eyes went wide as they shot down to see a black growth at the base of her middle finger, one with cracked and rough skin that was reminiscent of a wart. It began to grow...

Her eyes shot open to see that nothing had changed, except for the position of kar'eth. She felt an arm around her belly, and a warmth at her back. Tali would have scrambled away, but she was still too weak and tired. Instead she lazily rolled away and tried to push herself up, only to find something odd at the fringes of her blurry awareness as she reached her knees. That blue blade flared to life as she whipped around and cut wildly, only to see the head of a maalraas fall well before the body. Recently waking up from such a deep sleep had her confused for a moment, so she simply stared at the beast with her brows furrowed as another pounced at her. Its massive paw swung at her head, slapping against her temple and the corner of her jaw.

Tali flopped to the ground, unconscious and completely unaware of the explosion of blaster bolts in the jungle yet again.