[M] Fish Out of Water [Yggdrasil_Hugger & NoviDome] (February 22nd Event)

Kavik sat cross-legged on his cot, meditating. His lightsaber hilts, modeled after the hilts of Lig Swords, levitated in front of him. The sounds of nature outside his hut faded away as he slipped deeper into the trance. Soon, he was wandering among the stars. He always returned here when he meditated. His mind turned to the Force. He could sense it moving through everything, like the magnetic halo of a planet. He followed the vision.

His awareness expanded outwards, reaching the nearby village. He could sense the villagers going about their day, their emotions like pinpricks of light in a violet sky. He could sense the animals and plants, locked in endless competition with each other. Predator fed on prey, the strong devouring the weak. There was balance, all creatures humming in harmony with the Force. His awareness turned inwards, to himself. His signature in the Force was different to the villagers’. Whereas theirs were small and dim, barely more than the twinkling of distant constellations, his was the bright and fiery blaze of a sun. He was a Sith, and Sith meant power.

There were two Jedi on this planet. He had felt them before he had arrived. Their Force signatures were like two binary stars, orbiting each other in a great and cosmic dance. A Master and her Padawan. He had seen them once, on a foray into town to gather what few supplies he couldn’t get from the wilderness. After that he had taken extreme caution to never been in the same place at them at any given moment. Even masking his presence in the Force could only do so much to hide him.

Suddenly, something interrupted his musings. A slight ripple in the Force, a barely more than the shaking of a spider’s web. Then, all at once, a great crashing. Something has broken through the Force like transparisteel shattering. His eyes snapped open, yellow and reptilian in the sun. His lightsabers fell into his open palms and he sprung from his cot. He tugged on his cloak as he dashed. Surely the Jedi had felt it as well. He had the speed advantage though, and he was determined to make it there first.

"...It's finished," Isabel breathed, her eyes wide and looking between the glass cabins now standing in two opposing corners of her basement."Wow, Andre, did you work all night?!"
"Sure did," Andre replied, taking a couple steps back to take in his work. He was tall for his age, and had to duck not to hit the fan hanging from the - admittedly low - basement ceiling. He wiped some sweat off his brow with a goofy grin. "Can you believe it?"
"Not really!" Isabel said excitedly, running her hand along the glass pane that served as a door to one of the cabins. She was a lot shorter than Andre, with long auburn hair twirled into a bun on the crown of her head. Her eye colour matched her hair, and she had a slightly upturned nose that gave her a cheeky look. "Did you follow all my notes?"
"Obviously," he said with a sigh. She turned to look at him, a hopeful grin slowly curling her lips, and handed him one of the two coffees she had brought down.
"You think it'll work?"

Isabel and Andre had been study buddies since their first year at university. They'd both excelled at their respective fields, Andre majoring in mechanical engineering and Isabel leaning more towards electrical and software engineering, with the occasional field trip into AI territory. After breezing through their bachelor's degrees and working harder for their master's, they had both been hired as PhD students with one of the university's most esteemed professors: a man specialising in sustainable innovations, reverently called Doctor Gideon. All of his students were heartily encouraged to think outside the box, and come up with new ways to combat the current levels of emissions being produced daily on their warming planet. What better time to experiment with crazy ideas than a PhD research project?

And so, Isabel and Andre had teamed up to create what could only be called a teleportation device. Sure, it would consume electricity, but it would render all public transportation obsolete. Trains, buses, cars... and airplanes, the worst polluters of all. Isabel had enlisted the help of one of the world's leading AI teams to help them brainstorm methods, and after months of research and racking their brains, Isabel had started to manage to piece it all together. The result was a theory they both couldn't undermine, no matter how hard they tried. Andre had actually tried extra hard, though he'd never told Isabel about that. Jealousy was an ugly emotion, but it had settled in his heart nonetheless. He had had no choice but to agree to test out her plan.

But there was one thing they had failed to take into account.

"I can't see why it wouldn't," Andre said, taking a sip of his coffee. "We'll start the experimentation tomorrow morning. That way we can spend today double checking everything."
"There's no need for that," Isabel said with a smirk. "It's bound to work." Andre took a deep breath, mentally telling himself to count to ten.
"Isabel, I really think we should-"
"Are you questioning my genius?" she asked, her smirk turning slightly bitter now. Andre rolled his eyes and set his coffee down.
"Listen. You and I both know damn well that you should always double check the work, no matter how 'brilliant' the creator." He'd surrounded the word 'brilliant' with air quotes, evoking an indignant huff from Isabel as she adjusted her backpack.
"Fine. I'll check it." She turned a performative circle and ended up facing him again. "Check done. It's all good. I'll take it from here. Go on home, you clearly need some sleep anyway."

The last two years had been the same old song and dance. Isabel would never let him forget that she had been the one to come up with the theory. That she had been the brains behind the whole project, and that he was only second-class. In the worst of their fights, she had threatened to take his name off of the research paper if he wouldn't do things her way. Though that had hurt him tremendously, deep down he knew she meant well. This project was her baby, and she'd do pretty much anything for it. He was just... not allowed to co-parent it, apparently. And the hurt and anger that came with that knowledge had obscured his friendship with her. It had been building, and building, and slowly poisoning his mind...

Until it all snapped.

"...Sure," Andre said softly, cocking his head to the side a little. "I'll go home. You just... Take a look in cabin A. Wrote a little message for ya in there." Isabel raised her eyebrow and turned around, heading for the cabin. Then her next choice of words sealed her fate.

"So you messed with the plans?"

Andre clenched his fists by his side and followed her to the cabin. The second she was inside, he slammed the door shut behind her and jammed it with a broomstick. Isabel whirled around and dropped her coffee, her face a mix of confusion and rage.
"Andre?! Stop fucking around!" He slowly walked backwards, first grinning, then laughing, then wheezing.
"No, Isabel! You've been putting me down for two whole years! You think your machine is so perfect? Well let's find out, why don't we?!"
"Andre, what the hell?! I never-"
"SHUT UP!" He rushed over to the machine's control panel and dragged his hands along it, pushing buttons and turning wheels as he went. "LET'S SEE IF YOU SURVIVE!"
"ANDRE!" Isabel banged her fists on the door and tried to kick it down, but to no avail. She could hear the machine whirring, powering up under her feet and all around her. "ANDRE, STOP THIS!" The sound of his laughter was drowned out by the crackling of electricity, and she could feel the baby hairs around her face and on the back of her neck start to stand up. She lined herself up for another kick against the door as a high-pitched whine started to rise. When she threw her weight forward she heard a loud crash, and the next second she fell flat on her face.

She groaned softly and lifted her head a little, only to freeze in place when she realised she could feel grass tickling her chin and neck. There was a fresh breeze playing with her hair, and... sunshine. She frowned deeply and blinked her eyes open, cautiously looking around. This... This wasn't her basement. The basement was gone, and so was the cabin, and... Andre. Her breath started to quicken as her mind raced to make sense of this. She scrambled to a sitting position and checked herself for any injuries, but she had remained in one piece.

Kavik crested a ridge, calling on the Force to grant him speed. With a single bound, he leapt across a gulley. The Force’s usual hum had become discordant. The feeling of something shattering had crystallized into a hard, defined shape. That of a person. He moved faster.

Behind him, he could feel the Jedi drawing closer. He had to choose: reveal himself to the Jedi to slow them down, or hope that he could make it to the disturbance and be gone before they arrived. He chose the former. He stopped running for a moment, then reached out with the Force. A tree, one of the oldest and largest in the forest, ripped itself from the ground. It levitated in the air for a moment, before firing off in the direction of the Jedi. Immediately the two Jedi stopped. He smiled and dashed away again.

He grew closer to his target, he could feel it. He flew over the top of a small hill, barely more than a brown blur flashing in the sun. As he reached the edge of a clearing, he slowed. In the center of the circle of trees, almost as if she were sunbathing, lay a human woman. She had a strange manner of dress, so unlike his own earth-toned robes. She had a strange smell too, he realized. Something subtly different to any human he had ever encountered before. She sat up, checking herself over for injuries.

Immediately, the disjointed song of the Force reminded him why he was here. It didn’t matter who this interloper was, he just needed to keep them away from the Jedi. A subtle approach would be best, he thought. Be charming, convince her that there are people after her. He stepped out into the clearing and cleared his throat.

“Excuse me, miss?”

He hadn’t anticipated the look she gave him. Perhaps she had never heard of the Kaleesh before, and the sight of him had startled her. It would be easy to see why, if you were to compare them side by side. Where she was short, with auburn hair and amber eyes, he was tall, nearly seven feet. His skin was covered in small reddish-maroon scales. His legs were digitigrade, with four splayed reptilian toes. His hands were also different. She had four fingers and thumb on each hand, but he had two fingers and two thumbs, one on either side of his palms. Perhaps most shocking was his face and mask. The Kaleesh possessed long, bat-like ears, golden, slit-pupil eyes, and two sets of long tusks, one set on his lower jaw and the other on his chin. Most of his facial features were hidden behind his traditional hunt mask, carved from the skull of a deadly predator native to Kalee and painted in red tribal patterns.

Isabel's head snapped up when she heard an unfamiliar voice call out to her. When her eyes landed on the creature before her a soft gasp, closer to a whimper, escaped her lips as her eyes widened in terror. What on earth was she looking at? It surely didn't look human, but it had just spoken to her... hadn't it? No... There was no way this was real. This had to be an illusion, some sick prank Andre was pulling on her... She glanced around skittishly, desperately trying to find a hidden camera, a crack in the decor, any clue that this was all a big misunderstanding.

As her eyes failed to find such a redeeming clue, her instincts won out over her ratio and she shifted her eyes back to the thing approaching her. Her whole body shook as she started to push herself backwards and away from it. In doing so, her hand landed in what was left of her coffee cup and she yelped, quickly jerking her hand back from the still steaming hot liquid. She tried to shake her hand dry and used her other hand to frantically dig around in her pockets for a pocket knife, or pepper spray, but she found none of that. Just an old pen, which she pulled out anyway and pointed at the creature.

"B-Back off!" she called out, trying to sound commanding but the tremble in her voice betrayed how scared she truly was.

He watched her scramble away from him in fear, managing to burn herself in the process. Her eyes, wide in terror, looked on him in fearful incomprehension. How rude, he thought. He took a step forward, then stopped. The Jedi were on the move again. They had recovered much faster than he had anticipated. When he turned back to the human girl, she had drawn a pen like a weapon.

“Back off!” She squeaked, and it took all he could not to laugh. But she was still determined to fight, even with nothing more than an ink pen, and the Kaleesh in him could respect that.

“Miss, my name is Kavik vas Ngaru. I mean you no harm, but there are those that would. They are on their way here, right now. I will explain all in due time, but for now, we need to move.” He said cordially. “I can protect you.”

Isabel listened to him in confused shock, and looked to her left and right as if she thought she'd be able to spot whoever this creature was talking about. Her breathing grew heavier with this new sense of urgency, and she grabbed a hold of the tree closest to her to pull herself back up to her feet. Her backpack was hanging from her elbows now, but she didn't take the time to correct it: she felt a strong need to keep her pen pointed at Kavik, as his name was apparently.

"Where am I?" she demanded, her voice a little more steady this time. The truth was, she felt reluctant about leaving with him. Partly because she had no reason to trust him, and partly because this was her place of arrival. What if she could somehow go back through this clearing in the trees in this strange, frightening world? What if she agreed to go with him, and never found her way back here, thus losing her chance forever to go back home?

“You are on the planet Sorgan,” he intoned. “Where are you from? Perhaps I could take you there.” The Jedi were getting closer by the second. Before long, they would be upon them. He tamped down a flare of irritation and took another step forward.

“I assure you, no harm will come to you, but we need to leave, now.” With the final word, he sent a wave of agreeability her way with the Force. Mind tricks were very useful sometimes. He hoped he hadn’t overdone it. On occasion, using too-forceful a mind trick could result in amnesia or even permanent cognitive damage.

Isabel frowned. Sorgan? What an odd name, just like the one this creature said he bore... It didn't seem right, none of this did. Part of her still wished this was all fake, or even a dream... She quickly glanced down at her hand and counted her fingers as a reality-check. They were all there. So this couldn't be a dream.

When Kavik took another step towards her she tensed up, clutching the pen. Her eyes fell on his hands... And what she saw made her question the reality of all this once again. Then he spoke. Before she could act out her original plan of stepping back and making a run for it, she felt like something washed over her. A sense of placidity overcame her and the hand holding the pen started to relax a little. She could only stare at him while she heard herself mutter a soft 'okay', feeling more and more like she was in a dream.

The effect was immediate. Her stance softened, her shoulders became less tense, and the arm holding the pen dropped. Her eyes took on a dreamy look, and he winced. He looked over his shoulder in the direction of the Jedi. With another wave of his hand, he send a wave of energy from the palm of his hand outwards. The forest exploded as the Force carved a perfect cylinder through the trees. Vegetation flew everywhere.

“That should slow them for now,” he said. He strode over to her side. “Come quickly.”

He took her wrist in his hand and began to dash away, already concealing his own presence in the Force. But try as he might, he couldn’t hide her’s. She shone too brightly, like a beacon through dark fog.

She could only stare in silence as the creature before her somehow disintegrated part of the forest right before her eyes. A torn vine got tangled in her hair but she paid it little mind. Try as she might, she could not make sense of any of this... but that seemed to bother her a lot less than before.

She didn't protest as he took her wrist, and the next thing she knew she was stumbling over her own feet, trying to keep up with him. She used her free hand to pull the vine out of her braid and tossed it aside as she ran with him, trying not to look around too much. She felt like any more new impressions might drive her crazy, if she wasn't already there.