(D4 LN, The Sickbay???) VENGEANCE - Phoebe

[Nekoinu]

"I should have carved you up and the rest of the Mandalorians!" the Nikto raged. He lashed out with his blade, but it did not connect. He kept slashing and slashing, even lunging forward with a blade that popped out of wristband.

"Why won't you die?!" He ended up throwing his sword away and howling into the wind.

[Phoebe Wren]

"Jesus Toboga," she exclaimed, stepping away from his slashes, and taking another step back for good measure even after he threw his weapon away. "I don't even know you! Why do even want me, and the others dead? What did I, or they, do to you?"

[Nekoinu]

"I can kill anyone," the Nikto lamented, "That's what I am, right? A force to be reckoned with." He began muttering to himself, incomprehensible beyond occasional words involving a pep talk.

"You're Riza's friend, comrade, whatever you want to call it," he said, snapping back to Phoebe. He snarled and held up his hands in a brawling stance. "I should have collected the bounty on all of you."

[Phoebe Wren]

She frowned but stood her ground, fists clenched together. "Why? As if killing people gives you an identity? Really? That's not how you figure out who you are."

Riza was... her friend? It felt like too strong of a word for the Chiss-woman, but she would certainly call her a brother-in-arms, like the other Mandalorians. They had now fought and bled together.

[Nekoinu]

"Who are you to lecture me?" the Nikto asked, though he still lowered his fists. He narrowed his eyes. "What gives you your identity? Who are you really?"

[Phoebe Wren]

"I'm... Phoebe. But it's more than just the name my parents gave me." It was difficult to explain. "It's... the name of who I am. Of who I present myself as to others."

"Tyvesh might say I haven't earned any name, but I don't care about his opinion. What matters is what I think, and who I think I am. He doesn't decide my identity. Only I can do that. And only you can decide yours."

[Nekoinu]

The Nikto looked away, much of his outburst going away. Perhaps it was Phoebe's words, perhaps it was mere exhaustion.

His head suddenly turned to a direction. "Do you feel that?" he asked. There was a slight pull on Phoebe's part towards some foreboding mountain, their surroundings once more contorting. "Like a trained beast, I find what is necessary. Pick up the scent, follow it."

[Phoebe Wren]

"I... can feel it, yeah." There had to be some weird explanation why she could feel it. But this whole dream, or vision, or whatever it was, wasn't making much sense when trying to explain it.

"Do you know what it is? That place?"

[Nekoinu]

"It's a nexus of power," the Nikto explained casually. He stepped towards it and then hesitated. "Perhaps it is bait, hoping to manipulate us."

Before them, the dust formulated into another figure. A redhead with an edgy look to her: black and red clothing, lacey. Most striking was her mask, ornate, covering her eyes completely.

"We are all puppets to its will," the stranger whispered. And just like she had come, the stranger dissipated into dust.

[Phoebe Wren]

The redhead with red and lace made her think of Rose, and the pretty ensemble she had worn during the night of drinking.

"It? What do you mean? Like... that this nexus of power has its own will?"

[Nekoinu]

No answer came from the strange woman. The Nikto, however, stepped forward. "The Force," he muttered, "That which binds all beings."

[Phoebe Wren]

The Force wasn't an unknown thing to her. She had heard many in the Alliance use the term. May the Force be with you.

But she always thought it was just some superstitions and strange beliefs of the past. The Force wasn't something the Mandalorians spoke of - the closest thing to it being the Manda itself, but even that was pushing logical explanation.

Yet... she could still feel that strange pull. "And... this woman? Do you know her?"

[Nekoinu]

"Not at all. Figure you don't either," the Nikto said. He reached out to where she had been and then followed the dust trail with his eyes closed. "I don't know where she went. I believe she might be an imprint left long ago on the galaxy."

His gaze went to Phoebe. "Tyvesh," he said, "He didn't teach you much about this. I have a feeling."

[Phoebe Wren]

"He didn't. Guess I didn't give him much chance to do it either... I wasn't around there for too long, to be honest," she gave a shrug and followed the Nikto. But keeping her eyes open.

"So he's also... part of this Force? As you and I seem to be?"

[Nekoinu]

"You, me, the rest of your clan," the Nikto answered, "We are all a part of it, whether or not we feel it. It's just that the lucky ones, like us, are a bit more in tune with it."

As the Nikto walked, the scenery changed to one familiar to both of them: Nar Shaddaa. But it was not their Nar Shaddaa, at least not what they had seen. There was rubble everywhere, men and women with red lightsabers, fighting in the streets. One leaped into the air, a grenade followed him, and he fell headfirst down, his body dissipating right on impact. Explosions racked the city, with several chants of revolution.

"They tried to overthrow the Hutts," the Nikto commented, "In the midst of a war. Good timing, but it didn't work out for them."

[Phoebe Wren]

"The Hutts are a stubborn lot, and their slime is difficult to remove," she said in a disgruntled tone. There was no love for those cowardly slugs.

Special huh. That was a new thought for her.

"I don't think I've felt like I was in tune with anything like... a Force. Maybe I've just not noticed it until now." While she was speaking, she was taking in the scenery of lightsabers and combat. How different it all looked, with those deadly weapons. She'd never seen those weapons, but had heard some stories about it. And about the Darksaber that was wielded by a Mandalorian that was supposedly something like those weapons.

"Are you showing me this, or is it the Force doing this for both of us?"

[Nekoinu]

"They," the Nikto started, but he pulled back his words. He kept his eyes forward, ignoring the spectacle around him.

It soon changed once more, the red lightsabers turning to blues, greens, and other, rarer colors. They no longer fought each other. Instead, their foe was the Mandalorian people. A miralian flipped over Phoebe's head and decapitated a warrior.

Then her blade locked with the beskad of another. "Your people are a plague on the galaxy," the miralian hissed before unleashing a barrage of blows that her opponent could not keep up with.

"The Force is, or perhaps a corrupted part," the Nikto commented. He reached out and took a deep, satisfied breath. "There is so much power in it."

He then snapped his hand back and shook his head. "Something is pulling echoes of the past, our emotional connections to said events, even if we were not alive for them."

[Phoebe Wren]

"Emotional connections to people we don't even know?" she raised an eyebrow, but the green-skinned woman's words as hanging with her still. It was true though, that the Mandalorians had been a threat to the galaxy in the past, thousands of years ago - this much she knew, but to her that seemed so minor compared to what the recent Empire had been.

"People fighting eachother seems to be a thing of history. Mandalorian or otherwise." Phoebe pointed out calmly, and took a deep breath as she tried to feel this power that the Nikto spoke of. Maybe she just needed to take a moment and try to sense that power instead of being overwhelmed by this changing scenery.

[Nekoinu]

"Not to them. The same emotions." The Nikto stared at her hard. "You have an anger, the source being your heritage. I know this because I have no connection to the Mandalorians, not until now."

He looked back, where they had once traversed. "And my past is tied with the Hutts."

The miralian continued to cut through Mandalorians. Soon, she almost drove her blade into another, but was stopped by a man holding a shield emblazoned with the symbol of some royal house.

"She's one of ours," the shieldbearer said.

"The Mandalorians will never be a part of the Republic," the miralian countered.

[Phoebe Wren]

"I'm not angry because I'm Mandalorian!" she retorted, with... well, anger. "Just look at Orella. She's a pretty peaceful kid."

Phoebe watched the scene unfold with a furrowed brow. There seemed to be a lot of history she didn't know personally.

"... I'm angry because of the shame that was put on me. For my parents... for leaving me."