Dancing with the Dark(Neo)

[Jazen]

Where was he? The darkness that had covered Jazen's view was gradually replaced by a hazy and blurred world as his eyes opened wide. He swung his head back and forth, trying to locate where he was. It didn't look like any planet he had ever seen. No.....he knew this place. It was the world in his visions. But there was something wrong. It didn't just look familiar...it felt familiar as well. But how could it if he had never been here in his life? Or had he? He didn't remember anything before the temple and that had been when he was young. Was this one of his memories trying to come back into the light? He twisted his head around, trying to find something he could use identify this place when he got back to the files at the temple. But all he saw was a single farmhouse in the near distance. Shadows moved about it, their sizes indicating at least two adults and one child.

One of the shadows turned to him, as if noticing his presence for the first time. Jazen instinctively reached for his lightsaber, only to realize he didn't have it. The shadow started moving towards him slowly, one step at at time. Unsure of what to do, Jazen started backing away. He had only taken a few steps when his back pressed against something solid. Spinning on his heel to turn about, Jazen found himself staring at the shadow figure, which was hovering inches from his face. The face had no solid features to lock onto at first, but after a moment, they twisted into the spitting image of Talau's face. Stepping back quickly, Jazen brought the only thing he could up to defend himself; his fists. But instead of advancing farther, Talau's face started to speak. However, instead of words coming from her lips, a strange whisper emitted from within. At first, it didn't even seem to register to Jazen. Then it started to make sense to him. He grabbed his ears in a desperate attempt to block what the whisper was saying, its audio only recognizable to him. He dropped to his knees, gripping his ears tighter to try and block it out entirely. It only got louder. And just when he thought his head would explode, the whisper was gone, along with the world around him. A single light shined from a path ahead of him and with a slight hesitation, he headed towards it.

Jazen's eyes shot open and the first thing he felt was his head swimming in pain. Wincing, Jazen grabbed the back of his head, moving into a sitting position as he did. His eyes scanned his surroundings, expecting whatever had knocked him out in the first place to still be present. But there was no one there. Not that he could see much anyway, considering the room was bathed in darkness. Twilight filtered through small windows lining the room, but they did little to enhance the clearness of the room. The floor was hard, probably a form of durasteel and from what he could make of the room, it was comparable to the training rooms at the Temple. Jazen took a calming breath, then reached into the Force, sweeping it out into the room around him. He felt something there, something alive. But it felt far far away. Remembering his dream, Jazen reached down to his belt and breathed a sigh of relief when he felt the familiar hilt resting where it should be. A slight flow of security came back into him with that knowledge and Jazen set his mind about remembering what had happened.

He'd been doing what he always did on Coruscant in his free time, roaming about the streets near the temple in his ever lasting quest for knowledge. He had been just about done his usual rounds when the Force had screamed danger at him. Unfortunately, the danger was a flashbang and before Jazen had time to react to it, the bomb went off. Bright light and a constant ringing in his ears had crippled his physical senses, but he had managed to sense three people at least moving on him in the wake of the blast. Remembering Umgul, Jazen blindly grabbed his saber, knowing by heart where its activation switch was. Despite being blind and deaf, Jazen felt for his enemies in the Force and to his credit, managed silence the first one that came within reach. He had probably been expecting an easy mark, having already crippled him and that had left him open. The other two not so much. A blow to his gut doubled him off, followed by a heavy boot chest. That hadn't knocked him out though, so they must have hit him with something on the head after, because he didn't remember them hitting his head at any point.

A sudden presence in the Force snapped Jazen from his thoughts and he shot to his feet, ignoring the protests of his still pained body. Whoever had attacked him must have taken him somewhere offworld, for when his eyes looked outside to search for the presence, he saw a vast forest. Defiantly not Coruscant. Snapping his saber to life, he let the icy blue glow of his saber light the room around him. He weaved it around like a glow stick, using its light to bring form to the shadowed walls. His lightsaber finally cast its light upon a door, the only door that Jazen could see. And the presence he felt was coming from the other side of it, approaching quickly. Gripping his hilt with both hands and pointing the tip of the blade diagonally towards the door, Jazen waited for his foe.

[Neology]

(OOC: Permission for was godmoding obtained from Greed prior to writing.


Pale eyes took in the misty forest from behind a curtain of shielded glass, lips pulled tight and bloodless under the crimson sheen of cosmetic paint as an appreciative smile formed. It was too bad about the radiation, otherwise Umbara was nearly worth the danger and time it took to travel there. The captive Jedi, picked up by her spies on Coruscant, was enough to pique the Lady's interest. The sloppy manner of capture rankled though; it would make it that much harder to sway the young Jedi when he viewed her as an enemy. If the two surviving spies had not brought her information about the young man's indecisive morality, she wouldn't even be willing to try it.

The Dark Lady turned on her heel, tossing her head to get a look down the hall. "The prisoner should be waking up soon. Make ready should I call for you." Novus inclined her head slightly to the two waiting Umbarans before starting down the hallway to the prisoner's cell, her boots clicking smartly on the tile floor. Motioning for one of the Umbarans to unlock the door, Novus drew two long, porcelain white spikes from a pouch at her waist, handling them gingerly despite her gloves. The whorls carved into the surface were filled with a medical numbing agent, while the spikes themselves were hollow, to let the wound bleed freely. 'H'ssiss fangs. Beautiful, delicate and impractical, but showy. Gently, she gripped the deadly weapons with the Force and, finally, slid open the cell door.

Detecting a blue glow, which could only mean the Jedi padawan was awake early, Novus cursed. Quickly, she released a powerful Force push, followed by the pair of hssiss fangs, one aimed at the shoulder of his saber arm, the other meant to merely pin his robes to the wall. "Do you understand why you were left with your saber?" She took several slow steps closer, careful to avoid stepping in any blood. "We don't have much time here, and its very important that you understand, before I take you on to a ship, that you cannot fight me. Trying will only make you less, as even now you lose your strength to blood loss."[/color] Her tone was conversational, seemingly unconcerned with the very real possibility that the Jedi might fight back.

[Jazen]

Locke had told Jazen a story once. About a man who could shoot a target with a holdout blaster from fifty paces away and who could slice leaves in half before they hit the ground. The man had no equal, no threat that he couldn't defeat. And then an asteroid smashed into his ship. For all his skills, he couldn't think of a way to evade the massive force bearing on him. He died screaming in vain. The moral of said story was that the unexpected can happen at anytime and even the best can be defeated by it. No amount of preparedness could help, for these moments came exactly WHEN you were unprepared. The trick to truly being the best was facing these threats when they came and remaining cool headed enough to find a way out of them. This was one of those times.

Like Locke had said, preparedness didn't help when the being that was approaching entered through the door. Before whoever it was had entered, Jazen had lunged out with the Force, reaching its touch beyond the confines of the room to feel them out. And he tasted the darkness in the being, so intense that Jazen pulled back momentarily out of the fear of being overwhelmed by it. He knew that he had to reach back out though, connect to this being so that he could gain every advantage he could if he had to fight. He just hoped his inner darkness didn't latch onto that person's darkness to pull itself to light.

He didn't stand a chance. The door slid open, revealing the slender form of a woman. Dressed in what appeared to be a skintight flight suit and with white hair that would rival his own, the woman took one glance at him before striking. The power of her Force push was greater than any Jazen had encountered before; it even made Locke's look like a child throwing a rock. His saber flew from his hands as he was slammed into the wall with a huff as the air escaped his lungs. He expected to fall to the floor then and he instinctively braced himself for the landing. It never came. In its place was something worse. Two elongated spikes slammed into him, one lodging itself in his robe, the other in the shoulder of his right arm. Both spikes drove themselves into the wall, pinning him several feet off the ground. Jazen let out a small wince of pain from the spike, but forced the pain aside. It didn't even compare to the pain he'd experience on Umgul. He doubted anything ever would. Using the Force to calm himself and to fight off the pain of the wound, Jazen rose his head to meet his captor's eyes.

Their cold, pale stare forced him to glance away for a moment. He quickly snapped them back in place, determined not to show weakness to this woman. She was a Sith, there could be no doubt about that. As she spoke, Jazen's mind started up, feeding off the information he was getting to create a solution. His saber, darkened on the floor where he had dropped it. The empty room with nothing for him to grab with the Force, to throw at his attacker. There was no obvious solution to this situation, at least for now. And it didn't appear that she planned to make him one with the Force, at least for the moment. So he would bide his time and wait for an opening. He slowly started to grip the spikes with the Force, subtly nudging them to free himself. If she thought she had crippled his lightsaber abilities by taking down his right arm, he had a surprise waiting for her. The thought of his saber dragged him back to her first question, for why she had allowed him to keep his weapon. The answer had already presented itself, based off how he was stuck to a wall. She knew she was stronger and obviously thought that no matter what he did, he was not a threat. Keeping his eyes level with hers, Jazen cocked his head to the side.

"I think you made yourself quite clear why I was allowed to keep my weapon, ma'am. If you wanted my attention, the spike digging its teeth into my shoulder have done a fair job of getting it. So if you want to talk, by all means, talk. I've got nothing better to do than listen."