Log:Coruscant Fires: Zandra vs Errod
Coruscant Fires: Zandra vs Errod
OOC Date: December 16, 2020
Location: Coruscant
Participants: Jedi Order: Zandra naMuriel; Knights of Ren: Errod Zand
Coruscant. It might have once been beautiful. Maybe it will be again. Right now, Zan has returned on her own to try to help rescue more people from the fire. There's always more people, the undercity is overpopulated, and the fire rages out of control. It leaves the area smokey with an acrid smell of burning - everything. There are occasional snaps and deeper booms of explosions as electrical equipment gets overheated or totally burnt up. The fire flickers a little bit in the distane, but hot spots glow eerily, showing up against the darkness and making them a little less dangerous since they can be seen.
Zandra is there, with a rebreather mask on. Her saber is in hand, but not lit, and the last of the folks rescued on this mission are just heading towards the refugee med station down the way. The people are gone, except for Zan, whose violet hair glows in the eery light, her hood pulled back and left to rest against her back.
Many parts of Coruscant are doing just fine. In those parts of Coruscant, there are no fires, no panic, no smoke polluting the air, and everyone is wealthy. But down here in the lower levels, the fire has been burning for months. Enormous chunks of what used to be densely populated areas are now smoldering shells, filled with the bitter scent of burning electronics, silicon and metal and overheated wiring.
Into this hell, the forces of darkness have dispatched their demons. Their purpose in doing so is unclear, but perhaps it is enough merely that targets of opportunity are drawn to the crisis. The mask he is wearing hides his face, but Zandra may recognize the black and grey outfit and the plain metal helmet from their previous clashes, and as he steps from a burnt-out husk of a building and sees her there, a gloved hand reaches over his shoulder to unshackle the chain-whip hung there and snap the rivulets of plasma that line its blade into life. "It's nothing personal," his raspy voice grates. "This is what I've been tasked with. No more."
Zandra's head rises, as she hears movement, senses - something, spies the gleam of the plasma out of place. The young jedi immediately ignites her green lightsaber blade, a reaction to the chain whip coming ready for action. "I know you," she says with a bit of ruefulness in her voice. "It was a bit more than nothing personal last time." She takes a breath, remembering that. She reaches for the Force, instinctively, the green light of her saber adding to the dark and moody atmosphere down here. "Ordered to kill and those are directions that are followed so easily," she adds. "It does not have to be this way." She maintains that, this one, but there is some confidence in her voice. She steps forward one step, raising the saber to one of the traditional forms, the balanced one for both attack and defense, not giving away her intentions if she can help it. "You are too late to find anyone but me this time, but I will not let you follow them."
"It was nothing personal then, and it's the same now," Errod replies with a shrug, his wiry frame rising and falling with a rattle and clink of weaponry. His gear is covered in belts and straps, and those are covered in various weapons and ammunition, in the iconic manner of the Knights of Ren. "This is the calling. It always ends this way. I go, and I hunt, and I kill, as I was born to do. As I must do."
The slits in his visor turn towards the direction she blocks him from, looking past her before focusing on her again. "I wasn't sent here for them. I was sent to find people like you, and here you are. I wish you were right, when I bother wishing. But you aren't, and it has to be this way." He lowers his weapon into a challenging stance, the tip of his blade pointing at the Jedi's eyes.
Zandra listens to that, and a slight smile crosses her face. "To hunt only for the thrill of victory is not my way," she says. She moves to the side a bit, there is nobody behind her visible. "But if we must fight, I'd rather face it head on than have you stab me in the back." She does attack, the weapon wielded as a sword might be. She moves fast, the blade sizzling through the air, showcasing the smoke and sending little flittery bits of light up particles to die like little fireflies in the night. Her saber comes forward with grace and agility, a calmness there and an intent to leave this fight standing. "You keep saying that it has to be this way. Have you even considered what if you're wrong?" Zan's saber slashes out first in an attempt to disarm, with a pivot and a reverse slash at a leg that misses, but is followed by a swift turn and a follow through aimed at the other leg.
"I am not here for the thrill of anything. There is no thrill to life beyond a fleeting moment of elation, a skip of the holotape before monotony and pain edge back in. Chasing such a feeling would be no more meaningless than any other purpose," Errod allows in his long-winded grating rasp of a voice, his eyes technically visible through the slits in the mask but mostly obscured by its shade.
She comes on, then, and while he feels no connection to the Force, the man is a warrior from his early years. He reads her intent in the placement of her feet, the twist and tension of her joints, the direction of her eyes. When her saber reaches for him, his blade meets it. When it dips down towards his leg, the leg isn't there by the time it reaches that space, and when she reaches for the other, his weapon is there.
Swatting the green blade away, he pushes through her guard, thumping a rough shoulder into the woman's torso to knock her back, the spiked tip of his chain-whip thrusting out after her, but the aim is poor and the reach is inadequate, barely succeeding in injuring the young Jedi. "I consider it daily, when I rise and when I lie down to sleep. There is no other way."
The words are spoken, but they in large part do not make sense to Zandra. She gets knocked back with a shoulder into her torso, the air momentarily knocked out of her, and that brings an oof as she reflexively sucks in air. A good thing as the Errod's blade catches her shoulder, injuring her. She hisses her breath back out, feeling the pain sting through, the robes not providing as much protection as she would perhaps like. "It doesn't make sense to me," she says. Though there's no confusion in her voice. "I see that there is far more to live for than fleeting moments." Her first swing after that injured shoulder is a wild swing, dangerous for all that, given it is a light saber swung around. She doesn't try to push Errod around but she does try to dance out of the way. Her legs are not injured. It's a fast movement, with a flick of her wrist sending her blade careening against his, and then Zan sidesteps, letting her blade tear with a sudden speed towards Errod.
"The life we think we're living is no more real than a dream." Errod shakes his head from inside the helmet, the movement translated through the metal as it twists from side to side. "Consistent details but no different from a nightmare. Death is the waking in a cold sweat from the horrors we've lived."
She counters then, tapping into her connection to the Force, a glitch in the genetic code to hear Errod tell it, and he steps back away, sidestepping, blocking, but her last strike skitters down his blade and nicks through one of those belts that crosses his chest, sending a bandolier with a sheaf of powercells clattering to the molten and solidified metal street.
The fight hasn't gone on for long but he's already breathing hard, each movement he makes drawing one hundred percent of the intensity he can muster. There is no reserve tank when fighting a Jedi; every second is all or nothing. In the moment that she strikes him with that glancing blow, he reaches out past her saber, risking his arms, and stabs that spearpoint tip as hard as he can towards Zandra's body.
It has to be all or nothing given the situation, at least in committing to the fight and the actions that are there. Zandra finds herself somewhat saddened by the words spoken. "Death might be waking from a bad dream, I suppose," she says, "if one works for the First Order or the Knights of Ren." There's a logic to that bit that she can't deny. She's still trying to come up with something to convince those on the other side that it really doesn't have to be that way, even as she comes so close to wounding Errod. The smoke around the area billows and flows, the fire crackling and popping, roaring with heat as it crosses to another building. There is the sad wail of death behind them, the sounds of a building collapsing with a rumbling set of thuds.
Was there anyone still alive there? Zandra doesn't look that way, despite the roaring in her ears. There is too much at stake. Her hands move on ther saber hilt, one hand pressing a button, extending the second blade. Too little too late, as the blue blade connects on the side of Errod's blade, which slices down her leg, deep to the bone, but not amputating or maiming the leg. Zandra staggers still, that leg not holding her well, as she has to swing with the dual bladed sabers to keep from landing on them. That hurts enough to close her eyes an a shout exhales, the pain emitting in one sound, before she goes quiet. There's no fighting right now for the Jedi, execpt the fight for consciousness.
It's hard to convince fanatics. Errod doesn't try to argue with her statement, focused on the fighting now, or maybe he just agrees with her. The fires continue to burn, as they have for months, as they will for months to come, it seems likely. And the two of them fight on, as they have for months, as their ideologies will continue to for months to come.
When his attack strikes her and the young woman goes down, there's no shout of triumph or gleeful laughter from Errod. Just a long, slow sigh as he relaxes his body, his weapon hanging limply from his hand as he looks down at her injured form. The fight is over, that much is clear, and he simply stares down at Zandra for a long moment while the fires burn.
The blade returns to its mount on his back, and gloved hands tug his helmet up and off, freeing long, unkempt hair tied back in a ponytail and a pair of tired eyes. Sooty glove fingers smear sweat from his face, leaving marks behind, and the man sits on a chunk of twisted machinery that once was a kiosk or vending machine. He looks over her again, with no malice in his gaze, merely confirming that the young woman is still lying there, and puts his face in his hands.
The lightsaber blades wink out, first the blue, then the green. The hilt is still in Zan's hands, with perhaps a death grip on it. She is struggling to stay conscious, watching as Errod goes to sit down. She does look behind her to see where she is, trying through blurry eyes to figure where she is at. Her leg feels on fire, as does her hand. She closes her eyes and then opens them, willing herself to stay conscious to face whatever is coming next. To face it, not run away or pretend it's not there. "You certainly don't look pleased," she manages after a moment. She can't manage this for long, that's not possible. She just can't, can she? She is concentrating though, trying to reach for the Force even with the seering pain sending waves of nausea through her.
Errod looks up again, weary eyes scanning the burning wreckage for a moment before returning to Zandra. "Pleasure is not a state I seek," he answers her in a low growl, gaze settling on the scorched pavement before him. "The galaxy is a chaotic place. People think that their quiet civilized existence is the true state of reality." An empty hand waves at the scene before them, the Underworld on fire. "This. This is its true face. Senseless destruction, with no end in sight, continuing just because it does. Because it's too much for anyone to control. Because it cannot be controlled."
He looks down at his hands, his feet, and then he stands up, approaching the fallen Jedi. "You and your people, you're like these fires. Sparks that catch and spread the worst ideas in people. Telling them they can be free to live however they choose, sending them out into this crushing existence with no pattern or purpose. It's just more noise, more sparks, and things never get any better. You're a cancer, random mutations springing up everywhere, corrupting the cell and sending it out of control, destroying its structure and killing it in the process." He sighs.
"I've seen enough death for one day. Where does a white blood cell go when its seen too much to go on? When the killer can't deny his conscience for the sake of the greater good?" Is Zandra even conscious? It's not clear he's even addressing her at this point, but he does reach down, grabbing her by the wrist and tugging her up, pulling her over his shoulder with difficulty, legs trembling and quivering from the adrenaline of the fight.
It doesn't take him long to find their trail, the people she saved, and by the time the stragglers hurry back to answer the raspy howl, all they find is their protector lying in the middle of the path, her lightsaber still in her possession despite the grave injuries she's suffered. No one else is anywhere in sight.
