Log:Resistance: Hints and Horrors
Resistance: Hints and Horrors
OOC Date: April 6, 2015
Location: Felucia
Participants: Ambrosia Greystorm, (not) Dash Rendar, Thomas Mirdan, Oriana, Kasia Ciph, Hex, and the inimitable General Hux as GM
The short story: Resistance soldiers uncover evidence of First Order atrocity, and a mysterious map. Hex throws up more than once.
The long story:
So how much does the Resistance love Felucia? Guys. We love Felucia /so much/. For those just tuning in to the broadcast, the Resistance intercepted information that the Finalizer was searching for /something/ here... but what? The first team deployed to this hostile jungle planet ran into trouble down in to caves, which was the fault of I don't know... somebody green... and had to retreat. Since then, a return trip to the cave system discovered a burned out village near its entrance, and within the caves, a mysterious shrine that the First Order tried to blow up, and the Resistance has been working to excavate.
The Outrider has brought us here, thanks Dash lol, I'm always happy to steal your ship for expediency. As the Resistance Troops make their way toward the burned village that stands guard over the massive cave that is their destination, they realize that there is no cover to speak of. The ground is black and charred, ash and charred trees creating a wasteland of sort all the way to the burned out husks of the few buildings that still stand, most of them having caved in as the flames claimed them. In the middle of the village along the walkway that stretches between buildings there are the charred and burned out remains of two great Rancors. Closer inspection reveals that one seems to have been felled by normal blaster fire, while the second had been blasted to death, likely from a starfighter. Beyond this, the closer they get to the cave and the last building that stands, charred to a crisp they will notice a strong stench wafting through the air in almost unbearable intensity. As their eyes are drawn toward that building, they will notice a heavy chain, and large lock looped about the double doors.
The stench is even worse than last time. This smells like things that shouldn't be thought of alone at night, and Hex, bolt cutters propped up over his shoulders, looks like he's going to throw up. "Right," he begins. "We're to open this, this time. Make peace with your gods, okay?"
"I'm going to need to return home and soak in tomato juice for a week after this." Oriana says with a bite, the smell getting to her. It's everywhere and unrelenting. Her stomach turns always, but any sickness that may come up is kept down, for now. Eyeing Hex with a bit of displeasure she nods a bit. "Yeah yeah, let's get this open and done with."
"It shouldn't be too big of an issue once we get back to someplace that regulates the air and can sanitize things." Thomas offers the other Sgt. "Though you could always try covering yourself in fresh soil and let it soak up some of the stench." He offers with a smile and shifts the blaster rifle from one shoulder to the other.
Captain Rendar is probably in charge? Who knows? Definitely not him. The Corellian ex(?)-scoundrel wanders along with the rest of the group, shoulder pads glinting in the light with utmost majesty. He scratches at his stubble and looks around, offering, "Place looks pretty bad-off. He looks towards the building and moves to slip his heavy blaster out of his holster, offering a nod to Hex, "Might as well get it over with."
Kasia is standing somewhere near Hex, back just slightly, with a folded square of cloth pressed to her nose. She'll drop it if she has to, but for now is doing whatever she can to try and filter out even a little bit of the overwhelming stench. "I agree, better to get this done than stay here any longer than we need to."
"You can soak in tomato juice for a week," Hex informs Oriana, wiping sweat from his brow and hefting the bolt cutters. "I'm gonna need to soak in cognitive behavioral therapy. Goddess, I picked the worst damn week to stop drinking. Dash, make sure nothing jumps out and shoots me, please and thank you." With that, he applies the cutters, and the lock snaps with a harsh finality that seems to echo in the burned and otherwise raped town. The doors still cling together, as if trying to hold to each other in their charred embrace to keep the Resistance soldiers from being subjected to the horrors within. A mighty tug splinters the doors from the hinges, both falling outward quickly. A torrent of buzzing insects fly free from the doorway and swarm those nearest. Within, the horrors only increase as body piled upon body lay blackened and still oozing on the burned out interior. Most of the corpses are frozen in an intense shriek of horror and closer inspection will reveal the building to have been filled simply with the elderly, women, and children. Not one single able bodied male lays among the corpses. Inspection of the doors will reveal deep furrows in the backside from fingernails.
"Ryma gesu'tak allesh," Hex chokes out in Ryl, then turns around and promptly vomits on Oriana's boots. Hurrrrrkk.
Thomas Mirdan turns to the side and reaches into his pack for some cloth that he cuts to make a bandana to cover his nose and mouth. A quick reach for two pieces of guaze to press in his nose to help with the scent. Mouth breathing.. yeah great. "So what is it precisely we are supposed to be finding Corporal?"
"Gross," Dash remarks to Hex's upchucking. He grimaces a little bit and levels his gun in front of him, moving to step in through the doors. "Grosser," he says, eyes moving around the interior, before eventually falling on the corpses. "The Order's nothing if not thorough," Dash muses, moving to kneel down next to one of the piles of bodies.
Good god. They.. this, those doors reveal horror, unnatural horror. The souls of those that did this to these people, these women and children, well they don't have souls. The horror of this site is worse than the smell, than the flies that cloud over them. Sure Oriana can put on a tough front, but seeing this shatters it all. A hand comes up, shoulders shake a bit and without hesitation a few tears fall down her cheeks. "The - these people." She gasps, hurting for them. "These children!" Closing her eyes and looking away, briefly the memories of her own world flash through her head, and the hovering question on if this is their fate too. Doing all she can not to vomit, when Hex leans over and vomits all over her shoes, swallowing hard and forcing strength with a breath. "It's okay brother," She says to him, barely able to hold herself together even if a tear or two comes down her cheeks. A hand goes to help lift him up gently, for now no care given to whatever chunks of what are on her feet. Looking to the bodies she mutters something in her native tongue, something that sounds like a prayer.
The doors open and Kasia goes very still, a now slightly trembling hand clutches the square of off white material to her nose and mouth a little tighter. After a few moments, her other hand lifts to wave away flying insects near her face while she rocks back on her heels, not out of any unsteadiness on her part, but the way one does when trying to decide whether or not to stay, or leave. Stay, apparently, because she doesn't beat a retreat just yet. "Why would anyone do this?" she asks, words slightly muffled, and not directed at anyone in particular.
"Slaves. There's no men. They've taken them for slaves." Hex is slowly losing his shit, there's just a general sense of unraveling about him. "They fucking killed all these families and they're using or sold the survivors, they --" He's a pale, pale, shade of green, like a really sweaty pillow mint instead of his usual more robust shade that's more like a martini olive. "Sorry," he apologizes to Oriana, then draws a breath and seems to make an effort to pull himself together. "Mirdan." One thing at a time. Yes. That is the name of the guy asking questions. Mirdan. "We go through here and look for anything that's got intel value. When we've got enough to make a thorough report, we put these people to rest, probably burning them is better than burying." No doubt they have some accelerant; Ambrosia Greystorm expected this. "Then we go into the caves and we have a shrine to make a report about and we try not to think too hard about what an ugly god damn place this galaxy is. If we run into any stormtroopers, we lock them in small spaces and slowly burn them alive inside their own armor while they scream for help that is never, never coming." His lekku twitch, very unhappy. "Or just shoot them, whatever." He reaches a hand out to give Kasia's shoulder a squeeze, then draws a breath and heads into the building.
"It's just breath.." Oriana quickly dispels her own feelings, worries, sadness and looks to Hex. "Just, breath." She knows that road he is going on, that his talk about the slaves and knows what it'll do, what this could do to him. "You can do this." She assures, most likely to his course of not drinking and that she believes he can handle the affects of this in the future. "And it's okay, just shoes." A foot lifts and the fluid and chunks drip off her feet. It's not the worst thing on the planet anyway. Looking to Thomas, then Dash, then Kasia, she realizes she is the only one who shed a tear for these people, these children, and there is a bit of a frown as a hand wipes away the last bit of moisture off her cheek. "Fucking sick bastards the First Order is." Taking a breath, this is a job and trying to focus on that she looks to Hex again. "We need to search through this shit? Damn it all too -" Words trail off into a slurry of what one can assume unpleasant talk in her native tongue. "Fine, fine." And so, she wound turn, to go search through this mess.
Thomas Mirdan frowns at the carnage left in the village and then arches his brow at the corporal's notice of no males of useful labor age. His eyes are watering from all of the odors around him making it difficult to really search like one sould and of course to borrow a phrase from somewhere 'we aint found shit'.
It's not until the hand squeezes Kasia's shoulder that she looks away from the carnage, finding Hex there. She swallows hard to try and keep her last meal from being revisited, and then turns to follow after Hex, because he's there, and she knows him, and following someone else is easier than trying to figure out exactly where to go here on her own.
"We come across any stormtroopers, we put them down quick, same as always," Dash says firmly to Hex, standing back up and slipping his blaster back into its holster. "Let's go ahead and take a look around." He swallows hard and exhales slow, fighting back any reaction he may have to the bloody scene.
Hex leaves Dash and Thomas Mirdan to make a sweep of the body room, heading up the stairs with rifle drawn to clear the top floor. "There's not much up here, the fire wasn't so bad. There's no dead people," he calls down for Dash's benefits. "We got -- this was --" Hex sort of stalls out, and gives up trying to frame this in any of the three languages that come naturally to him. "I'm gonna go get the accelerant."
Dash Rendar spends a while digging through the bodies, trying his best to not throw up all over the place, and doing a better job of it than Hex. "Alright, no need to draw this out," he call back to the Corporal, before a wayward ray of light hits something sparkly in the pile of corpses. He 'hrmmm's softly and pulls a small knife from his belt and kneels back down, offering a quiet 'sorry' to the body he's about to defile. He digs the knife into the flesh and makes a few small infusions before his hand reaches into the gross, decaying stomach cavity of a deceased old man. His hand slides out of the old man's corpse, clutching a green gem between his thumb and index finger, "Looks like the Order missed something." He studies the gem for a moment after he stands back up and tucks it safely away into his pouch. "We'll get this back and let someone smarter than me look it over."
Knowing the horror below Oriana had moved up to the second floor, and not found much. Something about it gives her the feels, like this place brought back memories. With not a smile or pleasant thought she turns to look at the others, the feed from her helmet cam recording and relaying this all. With only a glance to the other two she would turn to head back down to the awful scene below.
Kasia is up on that second floor too, at first simply following Hex, but then breaks away to continue her slow wandering search of the area. She glances back at the others as they descend to the first floor, but she remains, less out of perseverance or determination to find something, but to delay going back down to the grusome sight below. The procrastination is rewarded as she passes a bookshelf, pausing to first inspect and then carefully lift a book from the shelf. She cracks open the tome to leaf through a few pages, brows furrowing at what she finds, and out of an almost absent habit she goes to return it to the shelf where she found it, stops, then tucks it beneath her arm.
Hex pauses at the base of the stairs, where he can keep an eye on book thief Kasia up there, and also the stack of bodies, the horrible swarm of insects attacking his eyes and face like ARE YOU DEAD TOO? There is some lekku waving in the service of keeping them away. "Dash," he says. That could be followed by so much. Dash, help me. Make this stop. Make this not real. Love me like I am your ugly green child. But what actually follows is, "What'd you find and is there any reason not to burn the rest of this?" Pause. "Were you touching the dead people just now?" Do you want cooties, cause that's how you get cooties.
A lone set of boots crunches mournfully on approach, from camp. Ambrosia's finished with whatever she was doing on board the Outrider. Setting up surveillance and monitoring from her vid feed, most likely. Maybe boobytrapping Dash's bunk with some toxic flora...who knows!? Whatever her task, it didn't keep her from staring at, almost getting lost in, the grotesque footage. Smells don't bother the old rebel on as visceral a level as they once did, but it's still undeniably rank. She's come prepared with a smear of something greasy on her upper lip.
She has no words for the team. Simply steps around the discarded doors and stands with sad, surveying eyes in the doorway. One hand holds a small jar /most/ out of place on the Major. It's a perfumed, herbal salve. A little high-maintenance to be on her person, but she offers it up in open palm.
"Found some sort of gem. Inside of that guy," Dash says, pointing to the body he just got finished digging around in, before he shakes his hand around, throwing congealed blood down onto the floor. "If everybody's done with their searches, let's light this place up and keep moving."
"We're moving to the caves, Amber. Nothing else to find here," Dash says as he moves towards and then slips past Ambrosia on his way back outside, his normally bright and cheery eyes looking lifeless as they take in the view of the razed village once again.
At the bottom now, she stands there, arms crossed almost hugging herself. Eyes fix on the gem that Dash has, and then move up to Amber and then to where Hex and Kasia are. Oriana will await further order.
The further searching on the upper floor is brief, and then Kasia makes her way to the stairs. To them. Stopping at the top to steel herself before she continues back down to the horror show below. She has the book hugged to her chest as she moves, and hugs it tighter the further she gets, her already grim expression only growing more so as she reaches the bottom step.
Hex doesn't look so good. Amber knows her troops, her good troops and her shitty troops, her star players and her trouble makers, and per the latter category she probably knows Hex. He looks pale and shell-shocked and dripping sweaty, and everyone is only saved from the smell of sweaty twi'lek by the stench of horrible, brutal death and decay. Also maybe a little saved by Amber's salve, for those who make use of it. Hex trudges outside and grabs a few cans of accelerant, then steps back inside and goes to work. This is probably not what was advertised as the soldiering life, on the Resistance recruitment brochure. He's saying something quietly under his breath in Ryl, maybe just to himself; the words have the lilt of ritual to them, or prayer. Some of the accelerant goes on the building itself, too, and when he's done, Hex makes a shooing gesture at Kasia and Oriana. "Everybody out," he advises, "This place is set to go up like a pyre and there's gonna be fuck all left when it's done." A check to make sure everyone's out, double check, then he lights it up and beats feet, closing those doors again behind him as everything starts to catch flame. And all those poor people burn a SECOND time. Nice job Hex. "Caves?" he asks Major Greystorm, kind of pleadingly.
"Wanna smell something else for awhile? Here. Forgot I had it in pack, truth be told," Ambrosia swings her arm to 'whop' Dash on the back of his arm as he makes exit. "Lemme see it?" Standing there with an outstretched arm to offer the trade - olfactory relief for shiny bauble - she keeps her eyes on the rest of the shellshocked team. As much opposition as she put up against personnel psych evals back in the old days, she may consider utilizing such a service on her charges, after this.
Greystorm takes a few long, ambling strides back when Hex begins to douse it all. The last contorted face-turned charcoal to make its impression before the doors close and flames consume it all is quite small. Infantile, in fact, trapped and fused to what may have been its mother's breast. Her lips remain unmoved, any prayerful thoughts kept to herself, but there's enough unspoken 'something' in her eyes to make up for it. At a glance, they appear soulless and cold. Not so unlike the heartless masks that made this mess. But for those who /really/ know the woman, they might catch the tiniest glimmer of moisture reflecting back the sudden rush of fiery blaze.
Dash Rendar wanders out towards the center of the village and waves a dismissive hand to Ambrosia and the offered 'olfactory relief' and says, "Probably better to remember the smell. It's all we ever got to know of these people." He looks around again for a few moments, exhaling a sigh.
Collecting his thoughts, he turns back around and moves to stand next to Amber, watching the building go up in smoke. He flips his pouch open and pulls the gemstone out, turning it around in his hands and saying, "Looks like it's probably used to activate something. Just a guess, though. Here." He passes it over to her and loops his thumbs through his gunbelt.
Moving quick Oriana is out of the way so the bodies can burn. And when lit the smell gets more intense, because now scent of fuel fire and smoke are enhancing and adding to it all. Hers stomach lurches as the Sgt stands there looking on while the bodies are given a more proper form of rest. Unlike when they were first found, no tear is shed, but her eyes do water. Under her breath much like the green smelly Twi'lek, but in her native tongue something that sounds like a prayer is said, and though not understood there is a deeper meaning and sense behind it while the bodies are as burned as they will now be within her memory. Giving what she feels to be respectful time to mourn the dead there is a turn to the others eyes drifting to the Major, and in that spotting that faint, faint moisture, which is more hidden than her own. "To the caves, Sir?" She asks, gently, not like a solider at all, but also knowing that the work they do is for the better and allows that to hopefully help bring resolution to this mess.
Right. There is about to be fire, standing /inside/ the building that's about to burn ranks high on the list of things one should not do. Kasia beats a quick retreat out of the building, the book clutched against her chest the whole way. Once she's safely outside, she too turns to watch as the fire is lit at this grim, and massive funeral pyre. Aside from that first comment on arrival, she hasn't said much, and she still doesn't.
"Let me have a look," Hex asks of Amber, to see if she'll play hot potato with Dash's trinket. He sounds glum though and sort of like he doesn't much care if she hands it over or not. Either way, he starts walking toward the cave entrance, toward the lift they found earlier - assuming no trouble along the way, he'll wait at its keypad for everyone to get aboard. Unless Amber wants to climb again, ha ha. A concerned look is cast to Kasia. "I'm not even gonna ask if you're okay," he says quietly. "This is - about as not okay as it gets?" A hesitation, then, "I'm sorry."
"Question left burning in my mind is...where are all the men?" Ambrosia rolls the gem around in her palm, staring vacantly at it. No flash of recognition, no surge of inspiration. It's just a cut, green stone, plated in gold. Arching a brow, she glances dubiously to Dash and passes it off to Hex with a roll of her wrist. A nod gets tossed around to anyone still lingering in the village. "Yeah. Caves. Down we go. Our guys have got to be set by now," comes the gruff response. As she strides along after the others, the major does leave something behind in offering to the dead. A tiny drop of saline cuts through the ash tromped underfoot. A piece of her soul, sparingly rationed for times like these. There's not much left, after all.
Dash Rendar follows the group onto the lift, his super amazing command taken from him by Ambrosia. He doesn't look too bothered by it. His arms cross over his chest and he looks over to Amber, "We're going with the theory that any able-bodied men here were either slaughtered or enslaved. Everybody else, well." He jerks his head back in the direction of the smelly, gooey body pile.
Assumptions can be made about what happened, and Oriana isn't going to speak hers others seem to be. She will silently follows the group to the lift, waiting to go below for more work.
Kasia sticks with the group as they move, glancing over at Hex and his quiet words. Her lips part to say something, then press together as she tries to think of what to say. After a few beats, she shakes her head. "You didn't do this, it's not you who should be sorry." She draws a breath and glances down at the book in her arms. "I don't know if this will help, but it might give us an idea of how many were taken. Who they were."
Hex blinks at Kasia's book, "What is that, some kind of record?" he asks, then sets the lift controls in motion and stares at the gem he's holding, while the lift takes them down, down, down into the darkness. "This... has something to do with the shrine. This goes to the shrine somehow," he offers good advice, then hands it back to Dash. "Or you can have it set into the top of a cane and use it to beat the unworthy." And some not as good advice.
At the base of the lift, the cavern opens up a little; the rocks are dark but keen eyes can spot evidence of blaster fire. Beyond the landing area there's a bridge over a decidedly hostile-looking acidic river seeping up foggy fumes that can't be good for anyone, and beyond the bridge, the area the Resistance team is excavating. It's a cavern room, the interior which is covered in a strange green glowing lichen that extend across the floor and up the walls. They can see rune carved walls and in the center of the room some form of shrine carved of gold and encrusted with very large gems. It looks as though the archway was collapsed by means of explosives, but the dirty, scrappy, pestersome Resistance has cleared it out, and the shrine is now open for investigation.
"S'what I'm thinking, too..." Ambrosia murmurs to Dash, then spends the remainder of the ride down in silence. Her eyes wander, settling upon the book that Kasia clutches so possessively. Anything to take her mind off what transpired down this shaft on her last visit.
With the others she rides the shaft.. down, to the lower level where the fight was before. For her it brings back a bad memory, if making her friend and roomate a block of ice. Lips twitching a bit she frowns some and shifts her head, the video still recording. For now, she will look around,, inspect what there is to see, and be mindful of their surroundings.
Dash Rendar drags his gloved finger across the shining surface of the gem and steps off of the lift, moving across the bridge and into the cavernous room with the nice big shrine. His thin lips purse a bit as he looks the thing over and he 'hrmmm's quietly to himself.
"I think so," Kasia answers as she glances over at Hex again. "Hand drawn pictures of people, the area, maybe more, I didn't look through much of it. I don't know how useful it will be, but it might be." She pauses, then adds, "It didn't feel like something that should be left behind to burn." She shifts uncomfortably and drops her gaze to the book in her arms, going quiet again.
Hex's lekku twitch unhappily when they arrive back on this familiar scene, and he's careful about crossing the bridge over the acid river - oh, there's old blood there - and about stepping through the rubble at the entrance of the shrine. Humans are alright and all, but if you want to search in a cave, hey, you gotta bring gross aliens that live in caves. To be fair, Hex actually seems really interested in the lichens, and Kasia and Oriana probably know him well enough that 'Hex don't eat ANYTHING' is on the tips of their tongues. Slowly he circles the little shrine room, looking, watching, searching for... "There," he says suddenly. He points. There's a spot there on the shrine, about the spot of Dash's found gem. "Put the gem there. It looks like some kind of activation... something." Should Dash comply, as the gem is brought near that spot, it leaps out of the person's hand like it is magnetized, the lichen around the shrine starts to glow brighter and at a faster pace and a square inset atop the shrine begins to glow along the outside border in a very bright green/white light. It appears to be a button of some sort. So that's cool and all, and usually you can trust Hex to reliably punch unfamiliar buttons without regard for consequence, but after locating the gem-spot he goes pale and announces, "I'm going to throw up," then calmly walks outside. Out of sight, he can be heard blowing chunks into the acid river while everyone else discovers ancient space magic. Huurrrrrkk. hurrrrrk.
Ambrosia pauses for a moment over the river of caustic sludge, staring at the rust-colored stain that marks it. Damn it, DeLong. She's slow to join the group in the now-accessible shrine, nose buried briefly in her datapad. Lithe fingers tap out a few notes to self as she lingers outside to exchange a few words with the deconstruction crew. How'd the gear hold up, how are /they/ holding up, how's the noxious fume level meter reading...all that jazz. *Tappity*Tap* go a few more notes, then she pockets the device under her chest plate and moves deeper into the ethereal scene. Her boots slip not over the damp stone, bearing her soundly and softly to peer at foreign engravings on a wall and the bioluminescent growths of somethings. Biologist she is not. She does have enough sense to not touch it, at least. "Gimme a brain," she snaps fingers at the civilian-esque crew loitering outside awaiting their next orders. "Whichever one of you passes for our chemical expert down here...ya wanna take some of this home?" She gestures vaguely at the lichens before getting out of their way and turning an admiring eye to the shrine when Hex solves the puzzzzoooohjeeeez....
Ambrosia freezes, hands instinctively ready to arm herself against whatever is happening. It's a lot to process and she feels her scalp tingling with unease. "Ideas, anyone?" she murmurs edgily, and takes a few small steps towards Dash. Because he's bigger and makes an 'ok' shield wall. "I'm open to them at this time."
Dash Rendar blinks as the gem leaps out of his hand and into the structure, offering a 'huh' in response. "Hell of a trick," he remarks, hands moving to sit on his hips. And while Hex may be distracted from slapping buttons for the time being, Dash is in perfectly good health and waggles his fingers, looking to Amber, saying, "I've got a great one," before he reaches out and smacks the button, waiting to see what happens.
As soon as that button is pressed, the entire cavern starts to vibrate. It begins as a slight tremor and then grows until the entire floor is shaking with a force great enough to likely throw some to the floor. Dust and bits of loose stone fall from the ceiling above to rain down on the Resistance soldiers within. The lichen on the walls starts to pulse with a greater intensity, building on each brightening swing into an almost blinding intensity and then fading to near darkness. The rhythm of the fluctuating light increases to a near strobe light fashion until all at once the quaking floor ceases and the lichen brightens to such an intensity that the room is transformed into a pristine white all around. The lichen seems to project forward, beams converging in the center of the room above until the entire cavern is represented into a huge star map.
With the video cam on her helmet Oriana makes sure to record everything she can, all they see, and well you can't record smell, thank god. A they trek along she is silent just taking it all in. A glance is passed to Hex as he goes to run off and be ill, again. Least her shoes don't get another volley of stomach loquid. Moving forward and nearing the shrine she leans in a little so the camera can take a good image of what's happening, and it's rigght when the gem flies to it. "Uh --" And then there goes Dash, pressting the button.
Then it happens, and everything shakes, hard. So focused on what may come out of the shrine this wasn't expected. Trying to stand and find balance all that webcam records is her failing back, curing, toppling over Kasia and then stopping to view the map above, the wearer only laying there still.
Concern marks Kasia's features as Hex runs off to vomit into the river of acid, which really seems like a bad thing for him to be doing, considering just who it is we're talking about. She'll go check on him soon. Really. Or she thought as much, but then the cavern begins to move beneath their feet. This is not how ground is supposed to work, dang it, it's meant to be steady and solid under your feet! Except that it's not. Even so, she seems to be holding her own, just managing to keep upright and on her feet. At least she was, and then she gets body checked by Oriana, which is more than enough to knock her off of her feet and onto her back with a yelp. The book she had been so carefully carrying slips right out of her arms and hits the ground, ending up a few feet away. If that weren't enough, she's then blinded, suddenly squinting against the vibrance that fills the cavern, and when the star map appears, she's left trying to blink the spots out of her vision.
Any reprimand Ambrosia was prepared to bark at Dash for get handsy with the unknown is interrupted by the violent lightshow erupting around them. It's evident that time hasn't taken all the pep out of this soldier's step though, because while cowering under a slender, poorly shielding arm, she manages to keep her balance. Weight shifts lightly as needed and at times, some fancy footwork to save her noggin from the angry ceiling. When it's finally over, she's crouched in a three-point stance, peering cautiously up and around. For once, the rest of her complexion matches her eyes, bathed in vibrant, green glow. "Uh...huh." Some parts of her feel as though they're still shaking as she rises from her crouch to gaze at the splendor. "Everyone good? Demo girl, you get that footage?"
The room starts shaking real hard and Dash slips, sending him tumbling back to land on his rear. But the pain is temporary, and he's currently surrounded by a big-ass star map. The scoundrel finds his way back to his feet and looks around, a little bit of a twinkle in his eye. "Well, look at that. I didn't get us all killed," he says with a big smile, dusting himself off and looking around at the map. "This is going to take a while to decipher. Should probably leave it to me," he says, mostly from a place of altruism. But who knows? Maybe there's some nice hyperlanes hidden in there he could take advantage of.
"Kasia, I'm sorry!" Oriana says quick from where she lays on her back, but doesn't turn too face her, the camera is recording and needs to take this footage. At most her head turns a little from side to side, making sure to get the entire map in its view. "All good, Major! My pride hurt a bit maybe but the footage is gathered." Thinking that she has enough, after a few more takes are taken she then pushes to spit up and then to standing, seeing if Kasia needs a hand up at all.
Kasia doesn't spring right back up, instead opting to stay on the ground for a few moments as she rubs at a tender spot on the back of her head. Tender, maybe swollen, but no blood, and she doesn't seem particularly dazed. "Ow." That sums it up for her, and then she slowly sits up, waving off the apology from Oriana. "It's okay." She leans to the side enough to grab the book, which she sets in her lap, and then digs in the pocket of her jacket to pull out some little device or another. Maybe to take pictures of the map so she can continue to gawk at it later, or to show the twi'lek who hopefully hasn't gone and melted his face off in the acid.
