Post by Regnier on Jan 10, 2012 4:13:55 GMT -5
Time.
To a Seer of the Force, it often has a much different, and much less meaning, even amongst their fellow Jedi. The way a Seer sees the Galaxy, the ebb and flow of the Force, time, it can never truly be explained to those who cannot see life as they do. Kellick Vakkor in particular had always had a very...loose interpretation of time. The way she saw it, she was only the tiniest speck of sand in a desert, soon to be buried, and inevitably forgotten someday. Time would go on forever. She would not. It didn't help that a great portion of the time she spent asleep or unconscious (and knowing her track record for trouble, unconscious may have passed asleep by now) she spent weaving in and out between dreams and visions, very rarely able to fully discern what was her mind and what was the Force. She'd long since accepted that nothing ever happened when you wanted it to or usually even when it was supposed to. Best to stop worrying about when it was coming or how little time you had and focus on what you were going to do when it came. Time, to Kellick, wasn't greatly important.
But come on, this was just getting ridiculous.
Two years. It had been two years since she'd set foot inside the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, and she wouldn't have been surprised if the rest of the Council would have given her up for dead by now. Sure, after she'd unfrozen herself after the first year, she had made very brief contact with a Jedi strikeforce, but she'd barely had time to say hello then. She hadn't really thought she would need to explain everything then, she'd, foolishly, believed she'd have time to go back to the Council and lay everything out for them there. What she'd been thinking, she still has no idea. She'd barely made it clear of the infernal space station before she realized she had an extra passenger on board. If she believed in luck, she would've taken that time to begin investing in as many lucky charms as possible. Whether the Cathar had anticipated her arrival somehow or had just happened to have been nearby, she never figured out, but there she was, and by the time her ship hit the system her nav console had decided what her forehead connecting with the interface meant, the only thing still functional were the engines. And a few lightsabers.
Of course, it would be Nal Hutta, of all places, that her face would select when it cracked the display. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view), the Haven had gone straight into a bog, so the damage hadn't been catastrophic on impact. It did kind of sink, though. Not that it much mattered, as it had undoubtedly been salvaged, stripped, and sold for parts by now. It was good Jedi didn't have to worry about the whole possessions thing, because had there been anything of real value on that ship to her, Kellick would probably never have seen it again. And yes, that was something she had plenty of time to think about, amongst an impossibly long list of other things. After the crash, you see, both passengers aboard were still in pretty good fighting shape, so for about the next half-hour or so, they continued trading blows and arguing as their running battle carried them through the bog, only pausing to fend off the local wildlife or avoid getting stuck, which both of them nearly did. Repeatedly.
It had been going well, too. Kellick had managed to break one of her attacker's blades, and had been managing to keep her on the defensive, driving her into an old mining structure to keep her from pulling one of her famed disappearing acts. She had her. They were both tired, hurting, bleeding, broken, running on empty...but she had her, after all these years, this was it. This was the end of the game of cat and mouse that had plagued her so long. The armored Fallen Jedi made her mistake, and they both knew it. She had slipped up, struck without thinking, and fallen straight into the web of Soresu put against her. Granted, Kellick had been forced to cut it close, the blade burning into her skin along her side, but she could take a little pain, and it afforded her that opening, that perfect one every practitioner of Soresu searches for in every battle. But she never had the chance to take it, for something had been set in motion that neither of them could have anticipated. Somewhere along the line, where exactly neither is sure, nor of which of them was responsible, some of the machinery within the facility was reactivated. Namely the mass stasis field designed to regulate the flow of molten metal and keep the temperature steady. The mass stasis field located in the room they were both currently occupying.
So there the two foes remained, locked in their poses of combat, the faceless form of black armor caught partway through a short-sighted lunge, the Sage Master spinning gracefully through the air, brushing aside the attack with her off-hand blade while bringing her main hand sweeping down from overhead, backed by her full momentum, the transition from Soresu's fluid grace to Djem So's unyielding force seamless. And there they stayed, for some time, the facility's power core managing to keep enough energy flowing to maintain the single room. They stayed until well after the power supplies of their lightsabers had given in, the blades fading over time, returning the room to its natural low light, silence once more reigning supreme. Or at least, so it was to those deaf to the Force. Neither of the living decorations frozen within, however, were, and what had begun as a battle of strength and words both, was now being fought through thought alone, and two being who have known each-other for many years and been closely tied to the other's fate so often would have plenty to throw at each-other in a battle of wits, most assuredly.
And eventually one would grow weary of the struggle and shut the other out, locking themselves deep within their dormant bodies to rest, only to resume later once more. It was endless, and neither side gave any impression of gaining the upper hand any time soon. Both had plenty of time to think on their arguments, time to think on their lives, on their futures, on what may or may not be occurring outside the walls of their prison without them...the pain of their wounds faded from their minds in time, and were it not for the fact that they could indeed see through their eyes still, they likely would have come to forget where they were, or what they had been doing. But the faceless helmet her gaze was locked upon served as a constant reminder every waking second to Kellick of her situation, as she was sure the face held in the strain of physical effort Dani was forced to stare at did her as well. And she was tired, by the Force was she tired of this endless struggle, this eternal darkness that surrounded them. She had been here so long, she no longer had even an inkling how much time had passed, and likely wouldn't have even believed were she to find out she'd been stuck floating in the air for an entire year. She wanted this to end, but no matter how she tried, she could find no way out. She couldn't see any controls to manipulate through the Force, and try as she might, she could feel no one else from this prison she found herself trapped in.
Only once had she felt another presence, just at the edge of her grasp, familiar enough, though unresponsive. As he had a habit of doing when he felt damn well ready to, her brother had given her that tiny sliver to grab on to, to right herself once more. Death, she figured, had changed his perception of time even more than hers. But where she could not reach out for help, his spirit could, and she had little doubt after his brief appearance that he would. His methods as a ghost in the Force tended to be very simple and blunt, but even though one rarely knew why he called out or what any of it meant, he invariably got people headed in the right direction. Kellick was far less worried about being stuck in place until Force only knew when that stubborn generator finally would manage to give out. But, hey, it had only been a few days since she'd felt him, right? Or...had it been weeks? It was getting really hard to keep track. Come to think of it, she wasn't even entirely sure she had really felt him.
Oooh, blasted self-inflicted mind games...curse my brain sometimes.
To a Seer of the Force, it often has a much different, and much less meaning, even amongst their fellow Jedi. The way a Seer sees the Galaxy, the ebb and flow of the Force, time, it can never truly be explained to those who cannot see life as they do. Kellick Vakkor in particular had always had a very...loose interpretation of time. The way she saw it, she was only the tiniest speck of sand in a desert, soon to be buried, and inevitably forgotten someday. Time would go on forever. She would not. It didn't help that a great portion of the time she spent asleep or unconscious (and knowing her track record for trouble, unconscious may have passed asleep by now) she spent weaving in and out between dreams and visions, very rarely able to fully discern what was her mind and what was the Force. She'd long since accepted that nothing ever happened when you wanted it to or usually even when it was supposed to. Best to stop worrying about when it was coming or how little time you had and focus on what you were going to do when it came. Time, to Kellick, wasn't greatly important.
But come on, this was just getting ridiculous.
Two years. It had been two years since she'd set foot inside the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, and she wouldn't have been surprised if the rest of the Council would have given her up for dead by now. Sure, after she'd unfrozen herself after the first year, she had made very brief contact with a Jedi strikeforce, but she'd barely had time to say hello then. She hadn't really thought she would need to explain everything then, she'd, foolishly, believed she'd have time to go back to the Council and lay everything out for them there. What she'd been thinking, she still has no idea. She'd barely made it clear of the infernal space station before she realized she had an extra passenger on board. If she believed in luck, she would've taken that time to begin investing in as many lucky charms as possible. Whether the Cathar had anticipated her arrival somehow or had just happened to have been nearby, she never figured out, but there she was, and by the time her ship hit the system her nav console had decided what her forehead connecting with the interface meant, the only thing still functional were the engines. And a few lightsabers.
Of course, it would be Nal Hutta, of all places, that her face would select when it cracked the display. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view), the Haven had gone straight into a bog, so the damage hadn't been catastrophic on impact. It did kind of sink, though. Not that it much mattered, as it had undoubtedly been salvaged, stripped, and sold for parts by now. It was good Jedi didn't have to worry about the whole possessions thing, because had there been anything of real value on that ship to her, Kellick would probably never have seen it again. And yes, that was something she had plenty of time to think about, amongst an impossibly long list of other things. After the crash, you see, both passengers aboard were still in pretty good fighting shape, so for about the next half-hour or so, they continued trading blows and arguing as their running battle carried them through the bog, only pausing to fend off the local wildlife or avoid getting stuck, which both of them nearly did. Repeatedly.
It had been going well, too. Kellick had managed to break one of her attacker's blades, and had been managing to keep her on the defensive, driving her into an old mining structure to keep her from pulling one of her famed disappearing acts. She had her. They were both tired, hurting, bleeding, broken, running on empty...but she had her, after all these years, this was it. This was the end of the game of cat and mouse that had plagued her so long. The armored Fallen Jedi made her mistake, and they both knew it. She had slipped up, struck without thinking, and fallen straight into the web of Soresu put against her. Granted, Kellick had been forced to cut it close, the blade burning into her skin along her side, but she could take a little pain, and it afforded her that opening, that perfect one every practitioner of Soresu searches for in every battle. But she never had the chance to take it, for something had been set in motion that neither of them could have anticipated. Somewhere along the line, where exactly neither is sure, nor of which of them was responsible, some of the machinery within the facility was reactivated. Namely the mass stasis field designed to regulate the flow of molten metal and keep the temperature steady. The mass stasis field located in the room they were both currently occupying.
So there the two foes remained, locked in their poses of combat, the faceless form of black armor caught partway through a short-sighted lunge, the Sage Master spinning gracefully through the air, brushing aside the attack with her off-hand blade while bringing her main hand sweeping down from overhead, backed by her full momentum, the transition from Soresu's fluid grace to Djem So's unyielding force seamless. And there they stayed, for some time, the facility's power core managing to keep enough energy flowing to maintain the single room. They stayed until well after the power supplies of their lightsabers had given in, the blades fading over time, returning the room to its natural low light, silence once more reigning supreme. Or at least, so it was to those deaf to the Force. Neither of the living decorations frozen within, however, were, and what had begun as a battle of strength and words both, was now being fought through thought alone, and two being who have known each-other for many years and been closely tied to the other's fate so often would have plenty to throw at each-other in a battle of wits, most assuredly.
And eventually one would grow weary of the struggle and shut the other out, locking themselves deep within their dormant bodies to rest, only to resume later once more. It was endless, and neither side gave any impression of gaining the upper hand any time soon. Both had plenty of time to think on their arguments, time to think on their lives, on their futures, on what may or may not be occurring outside the walls of their prison without them...the pain of their wounds faded from their minds in time, and were it not for the fact that they could indeed see through their eyes still, they likely would have come to forget where they were, or what they had been doing. But the faceless helmet her gaze was locked upon served as a constant reminder every waking second to Kellick of her situation, as she was sure the face held in the strain of physical effort Dani was forced to stare at did her as well. And she was tired, by the Force was she tired of this endless struggle, this eternal darkness that surrounded them. She had been here so long, she no longer had even an inkling how much time had passed, and likely wouldn't have even believed were she to find out she'd been stuck floating in the air for an entire year. She wanted this to end, but no matter how she tried, she could find no way out. She couldn't see any controls to manipulate through the Force, and try as she might, she could feel no one else from this prison she found herself trapped in.
Only once had she felt another presence, just at the edge of her grasp, familiar enough, though unresponsive. As he had a habit of doing when he felt damn well ready to, her brother had given her that tiny sliver to grab on to, to right herself once more. Death, she figured, had changed his perception of time even more than hers. But where she could not reach out for help, his spirit could, and she had little doubt after his brief appearance that he would. His methods as a ghost in the Force tended to be very simple and blunt, but even though one rarely knew why he called out or what any of it meant, he invariably got people headed in the right direction. Kellick was far less worried about being stuck in place until Force only knew when that stubborn generator finally would manage to give out. But, hey, it had only been a few days since she'd felt him, right? Or...had it been weeks? It was getting really hard to keep track. Come to think of it, she wasn't even entirely sure she had really felt him.
Oooh, blasted self-inflicted mind games...curse my brain sometimes.