I Know Something About Pain You Don't

There was no shortage of things to do to keep busy around here, so Tahiri tended not to notice the little insignificant personal things, like if her utility belt was fraying.

So it'd taken her until tonight, when she was staring down at the floor trying to find a screw she'd dropped, to notice that her pant legs seemed to be a couple of centimeters shorter than she'd remembered.

Had she grown again? Huh. She wouldn't complain, really.

[OOC: Totally solo_sword's fault. Establishy, mostly, but open for calls if you want.]

Really, Tahiri could have been annoyed that all her evacuation efforts had ended up being for nothing in the end, but she was too grateful to have everyone back to focus on that. (Maybe later, once she'd slept off the exhaustion, there'd be a little room for that.)

Not helping with the exhaustion was the sudden rush of sensing everyone through the Force again, where a week ago that sensation had been dwindling rapidly. That part she didn't mind, though; that just reinforced the sense that everything was right again -- plus she could draw on that to keep herself on her feet just a little while longer.

She got back to her little cliff dwelling after conferring with Sekot and some of the local village leaders, took a nice long bath to deal with the fact that she felt unpleasantly like the inside of a sandcrawler, then curled up on her bed with her datapad and comlink to check messages on both. Jaina's voicemail, now that she finally had a chance to listen to it, made her laugh -- and send a quick text message back to her and Ben.

I knew you'd fix this. Thanks.

Firekeeper and her other friends should get messages too, she thought, half-drifting out of consciousness, but even drawing on the Force she was too tired to manage more words than she just had. Maybe after a nap . . .

[OOC: Oh god finally I get a chance to get back online. Open for calls with the usual daytime SP disclaimer, and feel free to assume handwavey messages of back-ness by, like, Monday evening gametime.]

Tahiri found it unnerving to interact with Zonama Sekot at the best of times, and tended to keep that to a minimum; it was weird to talk to the manifestation of a living planet's consciousness. The past couple of days hadn't left her much choice, though; she'd been glued to the star maps on her datapad, watching as system after system blinked out of existence and telling the hyperdrive equipped planet where to go.

It was hard to stay one jump ahead when there wasn't a whole lot of galaxy left.

She was exhausted from trying to spearhead an evacuation effort that got a little harder every time someone who'd been helping faded out of existence, and just felt demoralizing now that she'd watched a void (not at all unlike the ones that the Yuuzhan Vong's coralskippers used, she couldn't help thinking) swirl up and swallow Tekli right in front of her. There were no suns in this tiny corner of space that was all that remained, and when she looked up into the night sky only a handful of stars twinkled faintly. Even those were disappearing faster than she could count the seconds.

Calmly, surprisingly so, Tahiri thumbed her comlink and set a message to record.

( Ben, Jaina, it's me. )

The stars were completely gone now; where Tahiri's consciousness had always buzzed with the awareness of life sensed through the Force there was only a vast echoing silence. The horizon, too, was dwindling as the swirling, inky mass rolled toward her. Tahiri had faced insurmountable odds before, but this time there was no Jaina to be her usual formidable self, no Ben to believe in her, no Anakin with whom she could seamlessly mesh her Force abilities and achieve the impossible.

Just her, and the oncoming blackness.

"Krel os'a hmi va ta!" The Yuuzhan Vong cry of defiance, followed by a guttural Tusken bark that translated to about the same thing.

It was meters away from her now, and rather than resort to any more words Tahiri unhooked her lightsaber from her belt, thumbed it on, and held it up in the very first high guard position she'd ever learned at the Academy. For the space of a breath it burned brilliantly, a golden beacon against the impenetrable dark. For the space of a breath she had time to think that at least she'd gone out as a Jedi.

Then, finally, as that thought made her smile, there wasn't even that any more.

[OOC: I'm really just a terrible person. NFB/NFI/OOC okay, posted this early in the day because solo_sword told me to. Go frown at her.]

As had become something of a habit over the past while, Tahiri waited until she had some down time to slip away into the forest and . . . check a few things from Earth on her datapad. It had become something of a nervous habit, but sort of like picking the scab off a --

That simile didn't work as well when you were half Yuuzhan Vong, but the sentiment stood.

She managed to connect to the Fandom alumni network, browsed to the Dancing With the Stars website, and . . .

Let's just say it was a good thing no one was within earshot. That reaction had not been terribly Jedi of her.

[OOC: . . . I had to. Shut up. I had to.]

Another long day of sorting out arguments and soothing flared tempers, playing translator, writing up reports and transmitting them back to the Council, and all the dozens of little yellow-tape things -- all of that was done, thankfully, and Tahiri finally had a chance to get some alone time.

It wasn't that she didn't enjoy the work; it was rewarding, if occasionally tedious, and out of all the post-war rebuilding efforts in the galaxy this was the one she was best suited to, so she wouldn't complain. It was just tiring in a way she wasn't used to.

She retreated into the jungle, toward a quiet spot near her cliff-built dwelling but sufficiently secluded from any passers-by who might have a reflexive bad reaction to technology (they were still working on the "abomination" thing, and it would be a long process), and pulled out her datapad to page through some of the HoloNet news.

From there, she patched into the Fandom alumni network, managed to pick up on some television broadcasts, and . . .

"Sithspit, is that Hope Solo dancing!?"

Not a surprise at all that ten minutes later she was patching her comlink through the network to use up her twelve votes for the week, right? It was sort of like supporting family! If you squinted, while hanging upside down in zero-G, and . . .

Oh, who was around to comment on it, anyway?

[OOC: I HAD TO, OKAY. I HAD TO. But open if you want, hee.]

She'd gotten the invitation, yes, and Tahiri would have loved to have gone to the alumni mixer, except that she had her hands full.

Not literally at the moment, though they had been earlier. Not figuratively at the moment, either; she thought she'd managed to soothe the ruffled feathers (so to speak) of the villagers involved in today's latest argument. There hadn't been bloodshed; she counted it as a win.

Also counting as a win was the chance to get away, find a quiet spot in the jungle, and just relax for a few minutes.

[OOC: And open for phone calls/emails should anyone wish to flail all traumatized-like.]

Tahiri had been to Coruscant three times since the war began, and every single one of those had been an infiltration mission. ( This time was no different. )

[OOC: NFI, NFB, OOC-okay, majorly tl;dr, and finished. Also kind of half-assed because the original got eaten. Stupid computer. Heavily summarized with bits of dialogue ganked from The Unifying Force by James Luceno, the last little bit by me, and Tahiri will be home tomorrow, yay. Seriously, that final battle is ridiculous.]

Two Jedi, encircled by thirty Yuuzhan Vong warriors moving toward them at a rapid rate -- it didn't take a Givin to know those were bad odds. "Remember, you're supposed to be training me," Tahiri said, turning to stand back-to-back with Corran. "What does the wise Jedi do in a situation like this?"

"The wise Jedi avoids situations like this," Corran said.

"Oh," Tahiri replied dryly. "I guess I don't know any wise Jedi, then. Very disillusioning."

"Right. And that's your lesson for the day-don't hang on to your illusions."

She felt for the power stud of her lightsaber. "I was hoping more for a crash course in 'how to kick butt when you're outnumbered thirty to two.'"

"Well, if you're going to be picky about what I teach . . ."

( Everything happened pretty quickly after that. )

[OOC: Yep, still NFI/NFB/OOC-okay. For the last time, adapted from The Final Prophecy by Greg Keyes. Yeah, I love that first bit way too much to put it behind a cut. Yes, Friday, shut up. I meant to hit post two hours ago.

. . . and now, straight on to The Unifying Force starting Sunday. I'm so sorry, but there was just no way to break them up.]

Nen Yim had been gone for hours, and Yu'shaa hadn't returned either; Tahiri knew it wasn't just her Yuuzhan Vong paranoia that made her suspicious of the circumstances. The whole incident with the qahsa that had knocked her out for a while could have just been a ruse. So she went looking, drawing on both her Jedi experience as a tracker and her knowledge of Yuuzhan Vong strategies to retrace the shaper's route; above her, the sky was darkening with clouds as the wind whipped up, and the scent of electricity and resin hung in the humid air.

( A trail of blood a few meters long led her to Nen Yim, collapsed in a small clearing . . . )

( She caught up with Corran and Harrar halfway between the camp and the ridge where the hyperdrive unit was, her lightsaber out and ignited and the anger that she couldn't damp down probably broadcasting on a wide Force frequency. )

[OOC: NFI/NFB/OOC-okay, ad nauseam. Still adapted from The Final Prophecy by Greg Keyes, and holy crap this one is long. Adapting starfighter battle campaigns may be a pain, but I maintain trickster_twin has it easier. You try getting stuck with the long, drawn-out ground infiltration missions all the time. One more late tonight to finish this book, so sorry for the spam . . .]