They'll Never See It Coming (Yarkar/Kress)

[Kressara Thryn]

Rain, rain, and more RAIN! Ever since the serpent got bored on the throne he’d been making it rain around the temple nonstop. The sandy ground was flooded in places, common walkways becoming ankle deep pools to reflect what little sunshine could peak through the gloom. Kressara was treading longways around one such shallow lake to avoid getting her boots wet, dressed for another offworld excursion.

It’d been months since anyone had seen hide nor glittering hair of her at the training grounds, her room remaining unattended most weeks, and no sign of her in the other common spaces. Word went around that she’d been coming back and forth to see the professor in his lab and occasionally lurking around the throne room. Once or twice the armory reported sighting her trading out gear before rushing off to her ship, vanishing for another extended time. She couldn’t have been training at all during all that time. Texts and holocrons given to her for study collected dust on the desk in her quarters and a fine layer covered her bed. When was the last time Yarkar saw his old ’rival’? Not since the trip with Aliclair to Bespin.

Now there she was, galavanting off towards the shipyard with a large box in her arms, likely another hidden trove of illegal goods she kept stashed in her room at the temple. Kressara hopped over a puddle and glanced up from her feet, noticing a robed figure between her and the only dry stretch of path. Squinting a moment, a smile split red lips as she offered a rushed greeting, “Oh, hey Yarkar! Heading back to the academy? Mind telling Sa’ato that I’ll be back in about a week’s time for another dose? He’ll understand what you mean.”

If Kressara had been of a mind to slow down and stick around, she might have noticed the foul mood Yarkar was in.

[Yarkar Edetar]

Yarkar was fuming. Rage filled his blood. He was without equal among the acolytes. A star that had consumed its twin, left without anything to siphon. He was starving, one could see it in his eyes. He could only rival himself without challenging Lords, and he had too much to respect for that until he was crowned one. His cheekbones were more visible than usual, he hadn't been able to eat. Food made him sick. To sate any urge than bloodlust felt like weakness. Peace is a lie, there is only passion. It rang in his ears, the music of rhythmic chanting conjuring shadows to consume him. His flesh was being stripped from his bones. He was becoming nothing.

Then, he saw... her. Kressara. The one who got away. His thoughts were already exploding, anger filled him as his brow scrunched, his lips curling into a disappointed scowl. He hadn't seen her in ages. He knew the library was missing some tomes rented in her name too, he heard the whispers. The acolytes whispering that she'd gone soft. That she was easy pickings. This couldn't do.

He respected her too much for that. He wasn't about to defend her. She needed to defend herself. She wasn't doing that. She was too busy being anything but a Sith. She needed motivation. So be it. Her voice grated along his skin, almost leaving wounds at the word "dose." Was Sa'ato the one supplying her? He was going to have to talk with the scholar. Clearly there was a misunderstanding. He had too much respect for the professor to expect such lowly performances from him. The words cut regardless. He wouldn't stand for them.

Red. Red lips, red thoughts, red sight. Suddenly, almost out of raw instinct alone, he lashes out. His arm like a blur, grabbing Kress' jacket by the collar. His grip turns his knuckles white, he could feel every pump of his heart swim through his capillaries as his gaunt face stares her down. His eyes were almost sunken in, emerald depths bursting with hate. His pupils had contracted into tiny specks. His lips barely part as his voice exits him with a low growl, audible only in the immediate vicinity.

"Outside, in the clearing behind the temple. You have 10 minutes to get your affairs in order. If you're late, I'm going to kill you, bird. Be grateful, I'm the only one around here with the honor to let you know that I'm coming."

He loosens his fist, walking off without another word nor time for her to retort. He gave his ultimatum. Now it was time to see if she was going to give herself the respect she deserved, or if he was going to have to kill another failed rival. The temple had been quite awhile without an acolyte receiving damage worth telling stories of... He stops quickly to retrieve his vibroblade from the armory, they'd fixed it up quite nicely. Yes, this would cause mutilation if she dared not to put up a fight. He felt it shiver in his hands, a familiar feeling, an old one, but it felt like he never put the blade down.

As he stepped out into the rain, he let it chill his temper as his boots splashed through puddles and muddy sludge, trudging a path of sandy imprints quickly filling with the pouring rain.

[Kressara Thryn]

Fingers latched around her jacket faster than she could react, dropping the box with a wet sandy thud. Her hand instinctively reached for a hidden weapon, but hovered there. Yarkar’s crimson overtaken glare met steady, controlled aggression as he demanded a fight out of the surprised bird who opened her mouth to answer. She was released to watch the back of his head as he stalked before so much as forming a word.

Something was eating him BAD. He stormed off with more rigid vexation to his stride than usual and the way he scorched her with a look felt off even for him. Shoulders dropped and her chest deflated, fog spewing from her lips. Collecting rain at her feet was her gear. It hadn't been illegal substances or stolen goods after all.

“Ten minutes isn't much…hell, kid. What's got you so spastic?” Kressara muttered into the chill.



Rain had been splattering that assassin’s armor rather frequently of late, so much that Kress had to regularly take it to Euphornis to be properly treated for rust and grit build up in the joints. She wasn't idiot enough to let her supposed peers work on her main defense, not with their constant judgment and wishes to see her drowned out there in one of those puddles. Her jacket hood did its best to defend her from the weather, though the ends of her lengthy platinum were shimmering with heavy water. Circling the temple and leaving clawed boot prints in her wake, Kress spotted the kid brooding alone in flooded fields and took a moment to reflect.

He wasn't much of a kid lately. Yarkar had grown into quite the adviscary in her absence…but so had she. Gloves were coming off. He wanted a real fight? She'd give him one. Trudging through, small waves reached far to scatter her reflection and his, casting the faint glow of sunlight bouncing off ripples across their forms. Kressara appraised him with the trained eye of a seasoned assassin, which turned to a predatory gleam fixated on him for the first time since they met. The crow came decked out in gear and infiltrator’s armor that she usually reserved for missions, every sheath and holster holding its respective tool of the trade.

“I thought you got over this already…but you want it? You got it. I’ll give you three seconds to talk it out with me instead. Otherwise? You better hope you know how to use that thing better than I do.” Kress drew a long, war battered vibroblade and flexed her opposite hand to feel her armored scaling gloves for kinks in the hinges. Her weight just barely shifted from one leg to the other, rotating each hip joint methodically before cracking her neck with a quick twist of her head. Her sword arm relaxed and flexed, every muscle primed and ready for a dreadful fight in boggy sand and ankle deep waters.

“I’m not playing with you this time, Yarkar. Say whatever you like about me…but no one here has ever gotten away with making death threats against me. You’re not about to be the first.” There it was. That killer pride he’d seen in action, yet never experienced from her himself. Was that what her first master saw before she took a crooked path away from the darkness? Surely when she’d been taken in, there had to have been something about her that showed promise. Since the loss, or utter disowning of her former master, the devilish reputation of the sith’s black bird had diminished to nothing but scoffs, rolled eyes, and disregard. Where was the girl who killed just as indiscriminately as her lord? Yarkar haunted the temple as an embittered acolyte and rumor had it, he was not too unlike her when she first began, yet ever since his return, she’d just been smiles, shrugs, jokes, and laziness, as though doing her best to be her worst.

But now the air was charged and his old rival finally acknowledged him as a real opponent. Not a sparring partner, or some inexperienced newbie in need of help. Not even as the kid she so often called him by.

The same blade that took the lives of hundreds was poised to leave its mark, just as her eyes held the bloody experience of all those kills fixed on the base of his throat.

[Yarkar Edetar]

Yarkar stood before her in the rain, unarmored, but not unarmed. He smiles. His eyes dart over her equipment as she was filled with so much... spite. He hadn't seen it in her before. He loved it. He missed her so much, and it seemed like she was back, in his eyes. He felt like he'd been looking into the eyes of a stranger for almost a year now. Staring into a painted-on face with a nice little clown nose to boot. He tucks his cloak's hood more securely around his head. Three seconds? He wasn't going to use them to try and call her off, oh no.

"Oh how I missed you..."

He draws his blade, his mind closing inwards. He feels his hands tighten around his handle, letting out a breath as he gets into the stance of his youth, the nostalgia tinting his moves. His blade pointed towards Kressara, his left foot behind him and perpendicular to the other pointing forwards. His knees bent slightly, and he could feel the tension in his joints.

He pushes off his hind foot, not giving her a chance to rethink this with a horizontal slash that was easily deflected by the crow. As their blades finally sang, ringing outwards like an unholy mix between a bell and a ripcord, echoing off the temple behind them. His smile, for once, felt genuine. It was almost like he was younger, the bags under his eyes hidden by the cloak's hood, making his head appear smaller than it truly was. As Yarkar readied his stance again, that slight bending of the knees made him appear even shorter than usual. He felt younger too, like he was playing games, despite his prior threats. For some reason, deep down, he doubted Kress had felt the same about the duel. He pushed away those doubts though, clearly she recognized the brilliance of his motivation. The assassin stood, and he could only hope to know her next move.

[Kressara Thryn]

He missed her. Kressara didn’t realize any side of her was genuinely missed by him, or anyone at the temple. The loathing in his eyes ebbed to make way for a childish beam, like seeing his best friend for the first time in years. Perplexed, she was once more left without time to react. Yarkar advanced and her sword arm moved on instinct to catch his downward strike. For all the force he put behind it, her blade clashed without budging, challenging his strength as pupils narrowed to pinpoints on the focus point of his throat. Her peripherals were doing all the work of monitoring his movements, eyes on his center to optimize her reaction times while her fine tuned body responded intuitively to the dance. Intergalactic common was not the assassin’s first language, but swordplay, and she spoke it fluently.

“Pisspoor approach!” Kressara barked as she hooked his blade with her handguard and dragged it outwards, leaving Yarkar’s head and body unguarded. Holding his sword at bay with her own weapon in a position that would be hard to contest without withdrawal or corrective action, her open hand struck out with viper quickness to snatch his face in a metal claw tipped vice grip. If she managed to grasp him, she’d put a hurting on the sensitive skin of his scalp and the curvature of his ears with those armored gloves, planning to throw Yarkar down by his head like a ragdoll she took offense to.

Water kicked up and lapped at their legs, rain pelting each warring acolyte as the spire loomed over their battle semi-aquatic battlefield.

[Yarkar Edetar]

Yarkar saw the glove reach out, his blade outstretched against Kressara's own. He realized she was already pulling out new tricks, it was sudden. He probably should have started with his own as well, but he wanted to at least make it look relatively fair. If he pummeled her too quickly, the rest of the students wouldn't respect her. After all, he was so overconfident in his victory at this point, he didn't even think of loss as a possibility. This attack, however, was too swift for him to react to. Her glove grabs his head, crushing down on it with metal plates digging into his scalp as she rips out hairs in an attempt to throw him to the ground. The pain surged through him, making him cry out. It was quite a bit more than he was expecting out of her, that much was certain. As she tries to throw him down, though, she'd notice he was definitely not moving as easily as she'd expect.

Yarkar had anchored his feet in the mud, the muscles along his spine painfully pulling back against the leverage she had on him, using the pain rushing through him to help ripple the Force through his musculature. He felt it in his blood, rushing like tidal waves. He felt it in his breath. His lungs filled with the Force as her glove continued ripping into his scalp. It was hard to see in the downpour, but she was drawing blood from him. He was fighting against physics, but he had more in him than one would expect. Perhaps there was something to his constant training regiment, or perhaps he was just too angry to go down easy. It was hard to tell which.

He buckles down, feeling the Force come to him, he clearly wasn't going to outdo her if he kept fighting like this. His mind rushed, faster than it should be capable, the Force acting as conduits of information in his head as he started to take in as much information as possible. Every muscle twitch flooding through his subconscious, steeling his mind against the pain while trying to predict her moves (Battlemind & Combat Sense). He felt each motion in the Force, noticing how her arms were locked up now, each engaged in its own small battle, but Yarkar lets a hand leave his vibroblade, feeling his strength in their clash weaken, but freeing up a hand for a quick punch towards her stomach. He puts his all into it, twisting his body both to put more of his weight behind the hit, but also to rotate his grip so he doesn't catch a vibroblade to the side. He really didn't want to have to deal with something as garish as that this early.

[Kressara Thryn]

Where she expected to feel the balance of her opponent falter, there was resistance digging metal claw tips deeper into his scalp. Cranking her wrist in contest with his stubborn defiance, Kressara pushed down harder against an immovable force with determination to drop the young blooded sith into the mud, but the brat just wouldn’t topple! She might have been able to read him better had her palm not been covering his face, literally masking his expressions. His blade angled against hers to prevent simply taking his side and a freed up hand balled into a fist that the assassin failed to notice, thinking she effectively grappled him. His body jerked and her eyes widened, attempting to correct her mistake, but ultimately taking knuckles to the gut.

Wind and a grunt was forced out of her lungs, her hand dropping from his face as her body doubled over. Red lips parted with a sharp whistling cough, spitting into the water at his feet where glitter spread and dispersed. Gathering onlookers at the edge of the field hooped and hollered, cheering on Yarkar who they assumed just won with a single punch. Gagged on the shock, Kressara wasn’t done in. Not nearly. She stayed bent over, focused her strength into maintaining her bladed guard with one hand while in a desperate attempt to salvage the position, reached to the water with her bloodied free hand. Scarlet lifted off her gauntlet and clouded the flooding as the ruby red earring dangling from her right ear glinted. It responded to the mental excursion of tapping into the force in spite of her block. The stone acted as a focus opening an avenue around that locked door, allowing a small flow of the force within her otherwise static signature. Focusing it into the tips of her fingers and imagining all warmth from the water fleeing like hydrophobic matter at her touch, a rapid super cooling chilled Yarkar’s left leg. Crackling sounded over the metallic screech of their weapons grinding and cheering peers, a localized cold freezing around his boot (Cryo) to hold him in place before the winded assassin slipped out of their entanglement with a half upright twist and a backwards hop.

Her face was twisted into a grimace from which a sneering smile erupted, teeth flashed through the pain to compliment the spark of aggression in her unwavering hazels.

“Better!...Much better! Now you’re fighting like you don’t want a knife between your eyes!” Kress growled, in too much pain to stand completely upright. That was going to hurt for a while. Sure he was held in place by ice, she dipped her blade into the water which sizzled and boiled on contact, using it to fling an arc of hot water and steam at his face to distract from her dropping into a forward, pointed stab at his liver.

[Yarkar Edetar]

Yarkar felt something. There was a wavering. A coldness surrounded his boots as the mud that surrounded them solidified. He knew. He looked her in the eyes with a sense of pride, he would recognize the pull of the Force anywhere (Sense Force User). "Pulling out these tricks already?" Yarkar looked smug as he felt her next movements in the Force (Combat Sense). He closed his eyes as the water was dashed upon him, not enough to scald, but definitely enough to be uncomfortable. It was like being popped by hot oil, uncomfortable, but bearable. His feet firmly planted in the ground, far too deep to remove with ease, he was forced to stand his ground against the oncoming strike, letting his instinct take over as he raised his blade to block the stab, ending with only a slight tear down his side.

The overlooking crowd fell silent, their thoughts on Kressara dissuaded by the sight of torn cloth and blood. Yarkar barked to them, "Now stop your cheering, you're wasting your breath. If you act like a crowd of excited gamblers any time you see a fight, you'll learn nothing. She's better than you. Learn."

Yarkar held his ground, an innately weak position given his most recent maneuver. His blade was on the inside, sure, but there was no way to make use of that without footwork. Did she know what he was holding back? Was she that used to being outmaneuvered, or was she setting up to just be more mobile than him? Either way, she did have him at a serious disadvantage. He'd give her that much. He had small thoughts of trying to end things here, but at the same time, he wanted to see what all she was planning. Instead, he thought of something much more fun. His focus turned inwards, viewing the frozen slop that contained his feet through the Force. He felt the darkness in him boil like heat, and his anger rise to his summons. His smirk changed to a scowl as his thoughts turned to destruction, his focus turning to nothing but rage and heat. Rising heat. The quivers of heat rising from the lava drifts of his home, making even the air beg for mercy. He reached out with the Force, willing it to rise. He forced wells of energy into his soles, before willing an upwards explosion of energy. The ice gave way as Yarkar's power lifted the ice above his boots with ease (Telekinesis). After all, he'd lifted much heavier than a small block of ice in the past, this was nothing to the true power of the Dark. She had much to learn. He would let that much be known.

Yes. This wasn't over yet.

[Kressara Thryn]

Her vibroblade screeched against its kin as her thrust was pushed aside, the distraction of hot water to the face serving as little more than an annoyance to the younger sith. Impressive. Kressara’s lips split further, shimmering teeth shown in a brief break from the seriousness as already her wrist and arm angled to turn her blade horizontal, pivoting against his. Her sword arm formed a backwards L shape as her body twisted sideways to accommodate, footing shifted to match intuitively. She held his blade for a moment, interested in what he had to say.


“He who pulls his punches is a weeny…or whatever that one old sith fart said once.” She snickered a retort, perhaps having a bit too much fun for something that started off rather heated. It was his criticism to the gathering onlookers that really shook things up though. For a moment with their weapons locked, surprise flashed across her features which she had to blink away before it became too obvious. Replacing her smile with a fresh cheshire grin, Kress snorted, “Well you didn’t have to tell them! Come on, I have a part to play here, Yarkar. Keep talking like that and I might start showing off regardless!”

Was it just her usual spunk, or did Yarkar’s words actually bolster the glitbiter?

Eyes returned to the focal point between his collarbones, peaking over the cross of their swords. She straightened the backwards L bend of her defending arm to steal the inside by pushing his blade outwards, but a sudden watery sloshing and the feel of angry force energy rising between them abruptly changed her plans. For a split second her eyes darted down to see ice lifting off Yarkar’s feet and her immediate focus became defending against THAT potential bludgeoning weapon…but not without her usual injection of personality first. Her thumb turned the vibroblade off, rain quickly cooling its steaming length, but before his could make more than a nick on its edge without vibrations to contest, she jerked her wrist to swat the side of his head with the flat of the sword. The hit (if it connected) was inconsequential, like a crow tugging the tail of a wolf just for the fun of it, before fluttering back. Flutter she did, half spinning out of their locked stance and flourishing to smack his blade off balance just enough to hop backwards.

From farther back she’d be able to monitor that ice chunk’s movement, prepared to deflect, or dodge while waiting for something to react to as she reignited the blade.

[Yarkar Edetar]

Yarkar felt that heated blade smack its flat across his face. He was too caught in the moment, too drunk on the power that he wielded. As she drew back from him, his eyes almost looked vastly deep, but empty, the abyss. It was only for a moment. There was a glimpse of Yarkar under his demeanor. All the grandiosity, the grinning childishness, and the weariness of someone who works too harshly peeled back to reveal darkness. Raw Dark, even if only for a moment. Yarkar quickly repairs his mask, putting on a cheery face, but there was definitely something that leaked out underneath it all.

"Oh, so you're interested in making this real then, hm? Perhaps it's time to show you why they came to watch me fighting. Don't you agree?" He smirks, putting up his mask once again as he sees her finally get steady footing. It was a mere moment before the frozen mud flew at her, aiming right above her shoulder, begging her to dodge it. He suddenly rockets forwards, a burst of propulsion rocketed from him as he moved like a blur. He felt his speed defy reality as he was right at Kress almost as fast as he started moving (Force Speed). He finally drops from his generally more defensive stance, adopting one more useful for the offensive. He starts a standard set of parries and aggressive slashes one after another. What she can do with such an action was yet to be seen, but unless stopped by some external means, Yarkar was pressing his advantage. Yarkar was a force of nature, inertia itself. She had given him a moment, a mere fraction of a second, and he moved to deny her the aggression she had been comfortably taking. Yarkar was War, and Kressara had prodded him. The crow pulling the wolf's tail must be ready for the nip, after all.