From Man, Monstrosity (Rugs)

[Atlantean]

Corellia. The Eldest of the Five Brothers and one of the Galactic Republic's oldest worlds. Its grandest cities were like the golden bronzium towers of Coruscant, it's lush forests and valleys were as tranquil as Alderaan's majestic Juran Mountains, and its culture and independence rivaled that of any free-spirited world. At a glance, the planet seemed to be everything the Republic ideally had to offer; hope, prosperity, a thriving society. But like all societies, the greater it soared, the larger and deeper the cracks within it became. Smuggling, pirating, black markets and racketeering were constant scourges on the planet's surface and beyond. And the deeper into the cities you went, past the glamorous casinos and cantinas, past the the bustling resorts and restless streets and skylanes, laid the ugly grounds of the poor, the dispossessed and the disadvantaged.

Ender had never before been to Corellia. In fact, he'd never before come so close to the Galactic Core regions on his own accord before. He'd always kept his wits about him, typically passing himself off as a simple Echani "Praetorian" martial artist, revealing his lightsaber only when either innocents or his own life hung in the balance. It kept his non-Force talents sharp and his identity more easily anonymous. But every so often, there came times where he knew unfolding events would overrule his hand, almost like sensing soft and vague premonitions through the Force translating as "bad feelings". And there, on Corellia in the dead of night, he had a very, very bad feeling.

For the past several standard months, random kidnappings had been plaguing Corellia's cities as night fell and parents slept. Kolene, Tyrena, Kor Vella, Bela Vistal, all of them. Even Coronet was not exempt, with the only common thread being they were families destitute. Children of all ages were being abducted, taken right from their homes in their beds, vanishing without a trace. To the CorSec police, it was just another series of unrelated crimes to be solved in the urban badlands, tied together by nothing more than happenstance. To the residents, it was the every-recurring "Curse of Lord Nyax", a demon ghost afflicting the innocent like a cycling natural disaster. But to the parents of the lost children, all it meant was the loss of their young, and with that alone, word spread like wildfire for any, whether they be bounty hunters, trackers, huntsmen or pathfinders, to find the children that no one cared about.

It was precisely the kind of crusade that Ender was drawn to, that he'd decided to live for. By the time the young Echani had gotten word of the bounty, rumor around it had already tainted the message. Bounty hunters vanished while in search of the quarry, and those that didn't returned with fractured psyches and ruptured minds. Corellia had a deep and rich mythology, one that evolved into urban myth and legend, and it didn't take long for claims of "the wicked Lord Nyax" cursing all those who would interfere to reach him. He could still remember it, weeks ago on Tatooine, when a group of bounty hunters sought rest for a comrade who had been rendered a mute from his experience on the hunt. The other hunters shared the tale vividly, ironically gaining prestige from their friend's misfortune, but Ender could sense a resonance from the muted man, almost like a fading aura. It was one he knew all too well; the taint of the Dark Side, and it was more than enough to grasp his interest from then on out.

Waiting in an abandoned apartment complex, across the street from a poorer residential living areas, Ender kept a constant watch, both with his eyes and his senses. Between the seemingly random abductions and the involvement of the Dark Side, Ender had only one theory to build on; Force Sensitive children. It wouldn't have been the first time a group had begun targeting them; when taken young, Force sensitives could be trained into living weapons without equals. The Jedi usually got the bulk of them, but only children registered and in the system. Countless fell though the cracks, cracks that others would hone in on. While only a theory, it was one he could put to the test better than a mere bounty hunter. Corellians had an unusual rate of Force sensitivity, with some among them even founding their own styled "Corellian Jedi", a branch from the Jedi Order. Over the weeks Ender spent in the slums and more poverty-stricken areas of Coronet, he eventually did manage to locate some youths who resonated in the Force.

With the only other option being to wait until something happened, Ender had spent the better part of nearly two weeks staking out a single neighborhood. He could feel the slightest trace of the Dark Side, shrouded and faint, but it was there nonetheless. All that was left to do was wait and watch, every night. The air became musky from evening rain, having stopped as the dead of night came. Ender sat as he always did, meditating, stretching out with his Force senses until it finally happened. A strong sense of malevolence, a product of his natural empathy, had struck Ender. He could tell immediately that the person did not use the Force, there was clearly no sensitivity, but there was a taint of the Dark Side on him all the same. With his mask fitted and his lightsaber safely concealed, Ender left promptly, heavily relying on his Force sense and Force Sight to find the individual again before finally spotting him and closing in near a corner building.

Creeping from the edge of a windowsill, it was a man, a Human, dressed in a sleek armor, with some damage points and blood stains on it, as if it were a trophy taken from the dead. His eyes were covered by a visor, but most interesting of all was the vibroblade mounted on his back. It was rare to see those specializing in melee combat outside the Jedi Order and their antitheses, the Sith Lords. Either the man was a traditionalist, insane, or was skilled enough to warrant its usage over blasters alone. No sooner had Ender contemplated his opponent did he see the unconscious body of a small boy flung over the man's shoulder. Moved to action, at the same time Ender had charged from the side of the building, the visored man had turned about, firing several blaster bolts in Ender's direction before taking flight to a nearby speederbike. Ender used a burst of Force speed as he skidded across the ground and leapt to a nearby wall, using Inertia to gain traction as he leapt again, back-flipping to the ground just in time to see the man run to the speederbike. Without haste, Ender used the Force again to hasten his speed as he ran along the side of another building, keeping the speederbike within his sights as he gave chase.

[Rugs]

“Are you certain that’s our guy?” Tsubasa crouched atop an old weatherworn apartment, hunched with his back against the side of the taller adjacent building to keep himself hidden within the shadows. He spoke quietly, and were it not for the small comm device in his ear, would have been speaking to himself.

“Positive,” came the robotic reply, tinged with a faint layer of static. “He matches the descriptions we’ve seen of potential targets.”

Tsubasa’s lips pulled to a thin line. Decisions, decisions… the Matukai mulled. Loosing Ifrit was risky. The droid, built like a dragon and with holographic wings to match, had carried his weight and more in reconnaissance work during the last few days, but his weapon — and zeal in using it — were dangerous for crowded residential areas.

That mean boots on the ground, and as far as he could tell, those boots would be long to one Tsubasa Arus, Matukai Adept. Not that he doubted his ability to get the job done.

But even that could cause trouble.

“Keep an eye on him, Irfrit,” he said calmly, rising as he peered over the side of the building to the rain-soaked street below. The important building where Ifrit, and their suspect, were located was directly across the street.

No matter how he decided to do it, Tsubasa needed a captive. A living captive. The kidnappings had been going on for months, with little in the way of answers for grieving parents or leads for increasingly-desperate law enforcement. The fact that bounty hunters and mercenaries were openly welcomed to try to solve a problem that Corellian authorities could not told Tsubasa all he needed to know of the matter.

And here I am, taking the job like a damn fool, he thought, looking down the street. But he could not shake the feeling that something sinister lay at the heart of this, using the Corellian’s own lore to mask the ongoing terror’s true purpose. If that were the case, normal men wouldn’t stand a chance. Not alone.

Hell, he might not even stand a chance.

Where are the Jedi? he wondered, not for the first time. How many children have to disappear before they come? He bore no ill will toward the Jedi Order, and yet-

“Tsubasa, he’s taken a child.”

Tsu stepped to the edge of the building, stirred to action by Ifrit’s words. “What?”

“He’s leaving!”

Tsubasa swore as he saw a figure leave the building and mount a speeder bike after firing some shots at a hidden observer. The bike took off with Ifrit zipping through the air after him, holographic wings bright, alarming red.

“Stay high, Ifrit,” Tsubasa said as he leapt from his side of the street to the other. The Force exploded through his muscles, bounding him skyward for a moment. He caught the edge of a sign that poked out over the street and vaulted around it, using the momentum to propel him further forward as he nimbly maneuvered the rooftops with Force-heightened speed. “Keep an eye on him — we cannot lose this guy.”

“Noted,” the reply came. Tsu saw Ifritis’ red light rising as the droid pushed himself higher to keep a broader view of the area.

As the fleeing man careened around a corner, Tsubasa leapt from his building to the side of one opposite the intervening street, bounding after the man in the new direction. He was dimly aware of another presence in the chase, but didn’t — couldn’t — pay much mind with so much at stake.

For better or worse.

[Atlantean]

Damn it, Ender -- Focus!

This was the first, for Ender. The first time he could have been a protector, rather than an avenger. A preventor, instead of a vindicator. Since the time he'd left his role as an apprentice under the Jedi Master Watchman, Eyl-Zin-Mul, Ender had not once been able to stop an injustice, stop a crime, a tragedy, not even a simple distress. Every time he'd helped another, every time he'd sought to do the right thing, it'd always been after a wrong had been committed - always after the damage had already been done.

This time was going to be the first; the first time he'd stopped it before it'd happened. He may not have been around in time to protect the young children already taken, but he would stop any in the future. That was Ender's vow, his dogma. And like empty words, they were ringing hollow as with just a few actions, he went from having the drop on his target to letting him get a head start - and on a speeder bike no less. Ender continued running alongside the buildings, leaping from building to building as he pushed himself with Force Speed to keep up with the speeder bike.

In a way he was given an advantage; skylane traffic was congested to corpulent magnitudes on Corellia, especially the capitol of Coronet City. As he went on however, the buildings grew further and further apart. Making the jumps while keeping his footing horizontal was changing from giving him additional reach to becoming impractical. And as the Echani made his way to the edge of the next building, he somersaulted horizontally, like a barrel-roll in mid-air, as he used his Force Sense to time his landing on an oncoming taxi speeder zeroing-in behind him. Like clockwork, Ender's feet landed right atop of the cab, which began to waver due to the suddenness of Ender's 'hitchhiking'.

Horns from speeders in parallel skylanes blared as the taxi Ender was ontop of swerved. The flashing lights from oncoming traffic was dazzling, enough to trigger a seizure in an epileptic. The noise was deafening and the speed made all things a blur. To track the abductor, Ender knew he would be forced to rely on his Force Sight above all things, along with using the Force to drastically slow down his perception of time and speed up his physical actions. As the physical world shed away, and Ender saw the world around him through life forces, absences, energy fields and auras, and took to flight. With the kidnapper in his 'sights', Ender immersed himself in the Force toward his objective, leaping from speeder vehicle to speeder, bringing him closer and closer to the swoop-bike riding assailant.

That's it... keep focusing, keep moving... don't blink, don't get distracted, Ender thought, doing his utmost to motivate himself, You don't catch that man, you've damned a life... you don't catch that man, that child is lost...

Ender felt his body strain as he struggled to keep up, pushing his limits as he finally began to come within range of the abductor. As if knowing Ender was close, without warning, the abductor turned down an alleyway stretching out into street levels near some run down apartment buildings. Putting all his strength into his legs in a final push, Ender Force Jumped through the last few traffic lanes, propelling himself several meters above and behind the abductor - close enough for him to comfortably lash out. In an instinctive and decisive blow, a characteristic booned by his martial Echani training, Ender violently clasped his hands together, and with the Force, telekinetically warped, twisted and crushed the two outrigger rods and directional steering vanes - the outermost parts of the swoop speederbike.

The abductor immediately swerved, with his speederbike turning as it scraped against the duracrete ground. In his descent, Ender plunged himself toward the kidnapper, just as the kidnapper himself leapt off the out-of-control speeder bike. Colliding with a nearby wall, the speeder bike's fuel cells were exposed to the metal-on-duracrete sparks, and exploded, launching Ender, the abductor, and the youth on his back, waywards. Ender's ears rang sharply as moments later he rose to his feet, slightly disorientated and dazed from the blast, but quickly recovered, restlessly turning and searching about for the abductor and the child. He'd already resolved things in his mind and heart - he would not let this one get away.