Coruscant, Later Wednesday Fandom Time

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They were in a long gallery that had once been flanked by stores and emporiums now, still following Luke's lead; he'd been following what he said was some sense of distant wrongness in the Force, but neither Tahiri nor Mara had consistently picked up on the same thing.

This time, though, she had, and she was staring off into the distance, alert, wary, feeling a little sick. Even Danni Quee, confused as she was and with only rudimentary Force training, had picked up on it.

"Did any of you feel something?" Danni asked.

"Yeah," Kell said. "Hunger. Time to break?"

Luke shook his head. "Not in the open like this."

"Awww. Explosive charges are so much more vivid when they go off in the open."

Tahiri stared up at him. Someone had a one-track mind. "Do you only ever think about one thing?"

"One thing at a time, sure. Now it's my stomach."

If he wasn't about seven times her size, and if it hadn't been a really bad idea, she might have kicked him. She wanted to, anyway. Luckily, she was distracted from that idea when Luke whispered, "Trouble."

They moved to form a circle, she, Mara, Kell, and Face on the outside, the others within. No one brought out a technological weapon, but the Jedi checked to make sure their lightsabers were at hand, and Face and Kell snapped their false amphistaffs out into rigidity.

Like it was on cue, a crowd of voices started roaring. Out of two storefronts at this level, and one on either side on the first balcony level above, came a stream of beings, shouting, charging toward them. They were filthy and obviously starving, people of all sentient humanoid species armed with crudely improvised weapons, and there were at least twenty charging their position and more coming every minute.

"Time to make contact," Luke said. He reached up for his helmet.

"Run," Bhindi said.

"What?"

"Run," Bhindi said again, and proceeded to do just that. Luke and Mara both shrugged and followed suit, Tahiri and the rest right behind them.

Five flights up and countless twists and turns later, Kell leaned over to put his hands on his knees as he struggled to breathe. "I'm too old for this."

Danni leaned against the wall, pouring sweat, but to give Baljos more credit it didn't affect her Yuuzhan Vong makeup. "Would you mind telling me why we ran? I thought you wanted to make contact with pockets of survivors! Something about setting up resistance cells?"

Bhindi's smile in response to that tirade wasn't a charming one. "Two reasons. First, normal people who want to stay alive don't charge Yuuzhan Vong warriors that way, even if they outnumber them a hundred to one. Meaning that they probably had some way to kill those supposed warriors, like retreating before us and leading us to a spot where fifty tons of scrap can drop on our heads."

Danni considered that, and the annoyance in her expression melted. "Good point."

"Second," Bhindi continued, "we don't have any reason to believe that any of the Vong warriors who attacked us on the walkway are still alive. Some are chopped up, some are blown up, some are flat as a roadway accident three hundred meters down, and some are all three. So our secret, the fact that we're wandering around in effective Yuuzhan Vong disguises, is probably intact. If we let a hundred starving survivors know about it, inevitably one will sell us out and the Vong will know, too."

"Yuuzhan V --" Tahiri started to say in annoyance.

"So," Luke said, cutting her off, "a detachment of us take off our disguises and go to talk to them as humans."

"While the rest wait here and breathe," Kell said.

"Right." Luke looked over them. "It'll be me, Mara, Face, and Bhindi going back. The rest stay here."

Tahiri wanted to complain, but instead she just grimaced and lowered her pack to the passageway floor.

Luke shrugged, offered her a smile. "We need at least one Jedi with each group."

And of course I get the group that's been driving me crazy, Tahiri thought, and asked, "So I'm baby-sitting people twice, three times my age. Where's the fun in that?"

Snorting, Kell affected a nasal, whining tone and a ridiculous expression as he looked at her. "Aunt Tahiri, tell me a story."

Tahiri banged her forehead against the wall. "Great."


[OOC: NFI, NFB, OOC-okay, you know the drill. I get the part of this duology that doesn't all take place in hard vacuum, mwahaha. Dialogue and narrative still borrowed and/or adapted from Rebel Stand by Aaron Allston, with some additions by me, and look, mostly I just kept this scene because I love Kell Tainer a lot more than Tahiri does.]

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*still cackles at this*

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[[*ggggg* I couldn't bring myself to cut it. I love Kell That Much.]]