The Witching Hour

[Darth Valravus]

Location: Arms Dealer Base, Celanon, O-6, Outer Rim
Time: Sunrise
Participants: @Logan @Darasuum
Theme: The Witching Hour ❅ Tommee Profitt
Intro: Previously on the Zandrali Diaries... finding the criminal base Aadya and Zandrali fight the quick response force fighters in space and defeat them. Now they must land and storm the base on foot...

The ship groaned as it came into a landing. The war painted face of Drali was not one of ease. While they had taken out the starfighters in the airspace above and around the base her own ship, the large star bomber, had taken its fair licks from the fight. There were dozens of enemies coming into view and the Deucalian would have just had one of her gunners blast them but there was various weapon crates and containers holding goods. Drali did not want to lose the hardware she had come all this way to reclaim.

"Gunners stay on board in case things get heavy." The rest of her crew would come with her. Locking down the ship's simple security redundancy she ran out of the loading ramp, it closed behind her as she moved immediatly to cover behind some hard case weapon shipments.

Aadya was somewhere nearby, she had not seen her go down in the dogfight. The same could be said for the light freighter that the slaves had used to join the two sith. As she began looking around for her cohort she was answered unexpectedly by the rumbling and crashing sound. The cause was the bulky frame of the corellian freighter crashing and sliding into view. Fire and smoke instantly rising in its wake. It seemed the witches and their make shift crew of recently freed slaves had possibly fared worse than the Crusader.

This was a battle field now and there were enemies by the score. Part of her was hyped up for the fight. They were going to be confronting these arms dealers and slavers. But she also knew what happened the last time she had gone into battle so close to enemies. Maybe she should find someplace calming, more relaxing before she did something that Drali would regret.

The ramp to light freighter opened and there was several dathomir witches. They looked toward Drali , giving her a simple nod, ignorant of the duality inside her that was fighting to come out. They then ran towards the approaching slavers that were trying to defend their interests. Not wanting to just stay in cover the woman stood up and began firing her laestien towards the defenders along side her crew members.

 

[Aadya Drast]

____________

The slaver fighter squad had proved to be formidable but had been cut down like any other enemy Aadya and Drali had encountered together. Her star fighter had taken a licking but kept on kicking and as it landed near Drali's ship and the totally busted up freighter, Aadya was glad to finally get her feet back onto solid ground. She hoped it would be some time before she ever had to fly a ship on her own again.

It seemed there were still quite a few thugs and slavers left in the compound, groups of them streaming out like army ants looking to swarm over their enemy with sheer numbers. Thankfully, her starfighter had a small cache of equipment inside of it. Just basic imperial supplies, but the trio of frag grenades would be perfect for clearing out the throngs of idiots outside.

Exiting her ship, Aadya held a blaster pistol in one hand and a grenade in another. She saw a group of thugs standing behind a small duracrete barricade, their focus trained on the nightsisters rushing towards their position. Priming her grenade, Aadya waited a second or two and chucked it behind them so that it would explode as soon as it landed. Her aim was true, thankfully, and the three thugs were eviscerated from the waist down before they even really knew what happened.

Running and sliding behind some cover of her own, Aadya fired off a few haphazard shots from her blaster before ducking behind it.

@Darasuum

 

[Darth Valravus]

___________________

The Deucalian watched the witches with interest. Her dissimilar irises staring at their method assault. Their lithe bodies that she had thought to be flimsy and weak even if they had not been well fed as slaves. Several of them screamed battle cries and Drali's eyes squinted as she felt them stab into her mind. The force bellows were more of a rallying cry, intent to strike fear in the hearts of the slavers and arms dealers.

An explosion rocked the ground beneath her from the grenade Aadya tossed. Popping up she fired her her blaster only half assed. Her mind was starting to cloud. Her hand reached up towards her shoudler and she advanced forward. NO, that's not what I want. Shoot them from a distance. Her hand stopped short of the handle and returned to grip her blaster firmly. Her already pale skin white knuckled the grip.

Muttering to herself in Deucalic <"Get ahold of yourself"> Maybe a moment to recover her wits was necessary. She knew what going into the fray meant. But it seemed the galaxy was not going to allow Drali the time to deal with her demons as a grenade from one of the arms dealers landed nearby. The plinking noise making her eyes dart towards it.

Those mother- she dove before she allowed herself the time to finish her inner exclamation. MOVE! was what every fiber of her being shouted. The explosion sent the cover she had previously been behind into pieces.

Opening her eyes Drali could see one of her arms reaching out in front of her. The blaster was in pieces. Pieces of shrapnel stuck into one side of it like it had been a filled dart board. Her eyes focused on her arm. It was redder than she remembered. Her war paint was not that color today. Looking down towards her legs she moved her legs. A thin piece of crate covered them but it was filled with pockmarked holes. That was when the pain hit.

MOVE! the word came again. This time not to survive. Drali did not know why she was feeling this way at first. Along with the fear of injury came the dread of what was coming. <"No, nonono. Not yet you frigid bitch!"> She tried fighting her otherside but she knew it was coming.

The last thing Drali would see of that day was her hands pushing herself back to her feet and then darkness. With that loss of time for one side, it was replaced by another. Battered and bloody from the explosion stood Zan. She scanned her dark painted face towards the direction of the comotion. An expression of confusion and anger etched into her dirty expression. Time to kill. She began making her way towards the clear enemy in that moment and kicked the inoperable blaster aside in the process. A force bellow left her own lungs, joining in the calls for blood shed.

 

[Aadya Drast]

____________

The sudden shift in auras around her friend Zandrali caused Aadya's eyes to snap to her location, a confused but intrigued look painted on her face. The duracrete cover she was currently crouching behind provided enough protection for her to take a moment to just watch, the forceful bellow exploding from Zan's hurting her ears a bit.

Aadya never really understood why sometimes Zandrali seemed one way and then other times she seemed drastically different. Things were beginning to piece themselves together though. Witnessing the apparent transformation added paper and glue to what had been gaps in the theory before.

Pulling out her lightsaber, Aadya holstered her blaster and moved from her cover. Another of the slavers was priming a grenade about five meters in front of her, getting ready to chuck it towards Zan and the nightsisters that were still charging.

Reaching out with the force, Aadya gripped the grenade and held it in place as the man tried to throw it, which caused it to simply hang in the air near his head. It went off about two seconds later, forcing shrapnel through his and three of his friends faces, killing them instantly.

A slaver with a two handed vibrosword made his presence known, swinging it towards Aadya who only just managed to parry it away from slicing her kriffing head off. It seemed Aadya's attention would need to be focused on the sword guy for now. She hoped that didn't mean some plucky slaver across the way put a blaster bolt into the back of her head.

@Darasuum

 

[Darth Valravus]

___________________

With each step her pace was growing fast and faster until she was running full tilt towards the slavers. They were clearly the enemy. Knowing Aadya was there and fighting alongside these other ragged looking women Zan knew well enough who the enemy was here.A patch of four arms dealers stood behind some cover, shooting at the dathomirian attackers. One noticed Zan charging and fired but the terrifying sight of the dirtied and furious barbaric woman with a large sword made his shots miss.

By the time his screams reached the ears of his nearby comrades she was already on him. His scream cut short and she made a swing from her left to her right. The momentum of her swing carrying her blade over her right shoulder but she turned with it and allowed it to cleave into another that had been beside the man.

The other two had turned to look at her. The closest one remaining was in between her and the further one meaning he could only be the one to get a shot off but by the time he dragged his arms over he no longer had any hands. All ten of his digits were still clutching his blaster but his hands had been severed just past the wrists and were bloody stumps. Both flecked the front of Zan's armor before she rams her blade into him. The ribs both in front and then the back being cut by the force of stab.

Instead of pulling out her blade she lifts up a leg and kicks the man's chest with enough force to send him flying into his fellow man. Pouncing on the clutter of tangled limbs and body parts she drove the blade directly down through the cadaver and into the man underneath with a scream of exertion and violent intent.

@Logan

 

[Aadya Drast]

____________

The sword wielder didn't waste any time in bringing his sword back up in an attempt to slash Aadya across the midsection. With a quick movement, Aadya pulled her stomach in and moved back just far enough to feel only the tip of the sword slice through the cloth of her armor. Talk about a close kriffing call.

Summoning the force, Aadya released a telekinetic push straight into the slaver's gut, something he clearly wasn't expecting as he didn't even tense his abs in an attempt to cushion the blow. It hit him full test, knocking the air from his lungs, though it didn't really matter as shortly thereafter Aadya removed the man's head from his shoulders.

There were still more slavers alive than Aadya would have assumed given the amount that they'd already killed since their journey had began. Their numbers were obviously finite and obviously much thinner already than when they'd arrived, but there was still much work to be done. It appeared her lightsaber was beginning to attract attention though, two slavers with blaster pistols beginning to fire on her instead of focusing on targets that were closer.

Aadya tuned her focus and let the force flow through her freely as she blocked two of the shots then deflected the third back at one of the men, striking him in the face. A fourth shot came at an awkward angle and hit Aadya in the upper chest. It hurt like a mother kriffer but luckily her armor prevented it from being lethal. Diving behind another spot of cover, Aadya needed to take a moment to catch her breath.

@Darasuum

 

[Darth Valravus]

___________________

They were both dead. All the bodies around her no longer held life yet Zan twisted the large sword inside the bodies beneath her before pulling it out. Half of her sword was coated in blood no and rivulets of the life fluid dribbled down to the cross guard and then stopped before making the grip wet.

Looking up from behind shadowed eyes the Deucalian looked for her next prey. Nobody was nearby but her blood was still pumping. Adrenaline coarsed through her veins and Zan needed to release all this pent up aggression that showed no sign of slowing.

Aadya was further in on the enemy territory and moved behind cover after taking out a few of the slavers. The shots from the arms dealers were hitting the cover she hid behind and were clearly focused on keeping the acolyte at bay. Grabbing one of the bloody bodies she slung it over her free shoulder and began charging with hit. Using the force to aid her along with her hyped up body Zan closed the distance.

She knew that there were enough arms dealers there to at least land a few shots on her. Zan was not going to be able to block the shots with her Sith Sword but that was what the body was far. Three of the slavers turned towards her and started to open up their blasters on her. Rotating her body and gripping the corpse she carried most of the shots slammed into the cadaver causing sizzling impacts and the smell of intense charred flesh to fill her nostrils. If Zan was not so blood thirsty her eyes would have wattered.

All the same a bolt hit her arm that was carrying the body. Yelling with her Deucalian warcry Zan released the body and propelled it horizontally into three of the nearby slavers causing a close lining situation with the burnt humanoid mass. The other was too surprised at the proximity and the performance before him to do anything else before the Crusader cleaved into his shoulder so heavily in a downward strike that the blade cut through all the layers of bone and ended up in his stomach.

@Logan

 

[Aadya Drast]

____________

It didn't take long for Aadya to regain her composure. The blaster wound on her shoulder was still throbbing, but it was manageable. If anything, she could use the pain to fuel her own power in the Force. The darkside could be useful like that.

Popping out of her cover, Aadya reached out with the force to grab the guy who'd been shooting at her who she hadn't managed to kill yet. With a mighty heave, she used telekinesis to grab the man around the chest and toss him through the air like a rag doll. He probably would have been able to survive if he didn't land directly onto one of the compound's radio antenna, which impaled him through the chest.

The couple slavers who were still outside started to retreat inwards, likely an attempt to fortify a position for a final stand. A decent enough plan all things considered, but in the end it wasn't going to help any. Every single piece of slaver scum in this place was going to gasp his last breath as far as Aadya was concerned. She was going to keep going or die drying.

Pulling out her blaster again, she fired off a couple shots towards two slavers who were fleeing inside, striking them both dead center in their backs. They keeled over pretty quick, or at least were smart enough to simply play dead. It was time to finish this.

@Darasuum

 

[Darth Valravus]

___________________

After all that Zan was fueled by her own blood shed. The palpable fear given off by those yet to fall by her blade. The pain of witches, slavers and Aadya as well as her own injuries added to the air, mixing with the scent of blood and smoke. Stumbling steps backed away trying to get some distance between them and the barbaric Sith

Enough blood was on her now that it dribbled down to the point of her chin and fell to the ground. Her pale skin was no longer the clean paleness it had been. Her warpaint had worn away and her body was blood drunk. There were not enough bodies here to make her worn out enough to get injured by the slavers.

A crash was going to be coming soon though. The good news was that her wrath was being satiated as she reaped a tally of kills. A Deucalian that did not have targets to kill at the height of their frenzy could be a danger to friend and foe alike. In a few moments she did not know what moves she had made. Zan had not contemplated action, she just acted and only in hindsight did she knew what strokes and attacks she had made.

The screams of more slavers were stifled as the spread out Dathomiri witches killed their fair share. A crying and squirming man tried clawing his way towards a nearby blaster. Zan stepped over him and struck him. Again and again, more than was necessary until she felt the jarring feeling of the solid hangar floor beneath the corpse. She was breathing heavy and part of her knew she needed to reign it in. Her body slunk to her knees as she took a breather.

One slaver had run out of ammunition and for some reason thought it was a good idea to charge the weary Crusader with a vibro-blade. He screamed his best attempt at an adrenaline fueling charge. Zan did not think he was a non threat. He was very much a danger to her health and while she had killed scores of enemies it only took one sharp edge to cut her time short. So when he got close she blocked his stabbing arm with the flat face of her blood slick sword and hooked the crossguard at the back of his wrist and pulled making hims drop his weapon.

The man stumbled back and with a growl Zan stood up. He had thought she was some simple ex-slave perhaps but now without a weapon he was not so brave. Back pedaling he tripped and fell back over the corpse of a comrade. Zan pounced and landed straddling the man. She delivered one right cross and then smashed her head into his face. She had taken a moment to slow her bloodletting earlier yet this man had decided to take advantage of that and would reap the consequences. The skin over the crown of her head cracked slightly at the amount of force she used to bludgeon his face. As his mouth gurgled with crimson liquid she stopped only for a moment before instinctively using force bellow just centimeters away from his face. Blood ran from his ears, nose and eyes adding to the mess.

After that Zan just sat up and tilted her head back and looked skyward. Some of the Dathomir Witches had seen what she had done but her vision was clouded. Now it was not because of her desire for blood. It was the actual physical blood that was in her eyes. Before she knew it she was flat on her back, half ontop of one of the slavers as she panted heavily.

@Logan

 

[Aadya Drast]

____________

The last of the slavers were posted up inside but it seemed most if not all of their power packs were beginning to run low. It was actually kind of humorous to Aadya. You'd have thought that emptying countless clips in and around their direction would have resulted in a few more kills for the slavers. Kind of pathetic really. There didn't go without any loss of course, Aadya had seen a couple of the witches go down in the initial charge. She was content that they'd been avenged tenfold.

With her own pistol still having plenty of shots left in it, Aadya finished off the stragglers still remaining without much issue. Her attention was only pulled away from gunning down the last few guys by a loud bellow coming from across the hanger. Aadya was unsure what was going on but she saw Zan sort of slump over, clearly exhausted. It was a strange feeling being the one standing between the two of them. Usually it was Aadyda getting drug off by Zan after a fight. A little role reversal was never a bad thing, though.

Before heading over to Zan, Aadya noticed a few crates on the ground. Heading over, she opened one which fortunately hadn't been locked. Inside were the guns they'd asked for in the first place, before this little black market arms deal turned into something neither of them had expected. Motioning over to one of the Witches, Aadya pointed at the crate. "Take this and put it on Zan's ship. I'm going to go over and help her and then we'll get out of here."

With the immediate threat of slavers gone, Aadya went over to Zan and helped her get up. "C'mon girl lets get the kriff out of here." Aadya said, putting Zan's arm over her shoulder and helping her move towards the exit. "Usually this is the other way around. Glad to see you're just as human as the rest of us."

As they got back outside, Aadya told the remaining Witches to head back towards their ship. They'd achieved their goal, which was nice. Noticing some fuel tanks on the ground she didn't see before, Aadya decided that this place deserved to burn to the ground. Taking one of the the tanks, Aadya ran a trail of fuel into the base and then chucked the can inside, letting it leak fuel everywhere. Taking her last grenade, she primed it and chucked it as she walked back to her own ship. The grenade went off, igniting the fuel and within moments the whole place was going up in massive, black-plume spewing flames.

The destination now was Dathomir, to return the Witches to their home and for Aadya and Zandrali to claim their just reward.

//end thread

@Darasuum