Darkness in the desert(buggie)

[Neive Undant]

Prazutis wasn’t one for entering any areas belonging to the Galactic Alliance. He didn’t want to enter enemy territory until he was ready for war... until he was a force that couldn’t be stopped. But in spite of that, some exceptions had to be made. So when he entered hyperspace into Alliance space, of course he was cautious...

Tattooine

Prazutis secured the dark brown cloak over his shoulders and torso, he cloth falling just above the ground under his feet as he walked towards the exit of the spaceport, a hood from the cloak over his helmet. He closed his eyes as he took in a breath, letting the force guide him. He came here for a purpose... and he didn’t like to be distracted.
He walked quickly through the sandy streets, towards a smaller of the buildings around him. Inside, he would find his answer.

[Master Buggie]

Two more days until he shipped off Tatooine... it couldn't come soon enough.

The sun-bleached and wind-beaten bantha leather awning stretched over the cantina's outdoor patio, providing shade to Buggie as he sat alone at a table. At the edge of Mos Espa, Buggie could feel the reverberations of ships lifting off in the spaceport, reaching up into the sky and out into the galaxy beyond. Each reverberation created a series of ripples in the clean glass of water before him. On Tatooine, water was rare; a clean glass was even harder to find. This cantina had both, so he had chosen to watch the days go by here, roasting beneath the awning while he slipped in and out of meditative trances. There were precious few opportunities for true meditation with the pirates; most didn't know he was a Jedi, and if they ever found him lost in meditation, they'd likely knock him across the head with something hard until he snapped out of it.

Buggie found himself at this very moment between bouts of meditation, just watching the foot traffic go by. Mos Espa was poor, but it was full of spacers who came from the furthest corners of the galaxy-- usually to escape trouble. A helmeted man crossed Buggie's gaze, a hood pulled up over his helmet. Buggie briefly considered the point in wearing a hood over a helmet, but beyond that, the man passed by his gaze with no further thought.

Buggie dug his toes down into the sand and appreciated the cool sensation beneath the coarse grains on the surface. Two more days...

[Neive Undant]

Prazutis entered the small building, a small cantina. Just like many of he buildings around it...
Prazutis stood, looking around for a minute before approaching a table near the back of the room. Sitting at the table, an older man with red armor and a dark red cloth on his shoulder. The man looked up, his hand moving to his lap as he looked at the towering figure in front of him.
“Driel dowery... i’ve Been looking for you.” Prazutis spoke, his voice distorter masking his natural voice.
“Yeah, ‘lotta people are, what’s it to ya?” The man said.
“I’m looking for an item hidden in the sands... a special item, of sorts.”
The man leaned forward on the table, his hand slipping down to the blaster holstered on his hip.
“You talking about the pyramid?”
Prazutis only gave a nod and the man sighed, leaning back before standing and walking towards he back, gesturing for Prazutis to follow.

“I’ll tell you what I know... but on one condition.” He man said. Prazutis was not one to be haggled with, but he silently listened to what the man proposed.
“In the same spot as what you’re looking for, there’s a data pad. I need that data pad brought back to my friend on Cato neimoida.”
Prazutis narrowed his eyes.
“What’s on the pad, that’s so risky you won’t get it yourself?”
Dowery sighed, obviously growing nervous.
“Look, it’s just some designs for a new device i’ve Been working on. Some pirates tried to get it from me, oh know how they are, and so I hid it away. Just get it to my friend on Cato and he’ll take care of it, i’ll Send you the coordinates.”
Prazutis sighed before nodding.
“Fine. I’ll grab them.” He shook his head, getting into more than he wanted to with this already.
“Alright... you have a communicator, i’ll Give the coordinates for it there.” He plugged them in for Prazutis before he nodded, walking towards the exit, not another word from either of them.

[Neive Undant]

Prazutis took out a handful of credits, about 16, and handed them to the man standing at a speeder rental stand. The man only took them and nodded to the line of identical speeders, Prazutis choosing one and speeding off, following the coordinates out into the dunes and barren desert in front of him.

After a while of riding, he approached the coordinates given to him by Dowery. He slowed the speeder, looking at the vast emptiness in front of him, and feeling in the force, the area. If he had been anything but force sensitive, he'd have given up and assumed Dowery had misled him. But the force guided him and now... now, he could feel something... sinister beneath his feet, within the sand...
Prazutis stepped off his speeder and followed the force's calling... The holocron was indeed here, he thought.
Looking down, he pulled his arm back and felt the force flowing through his muscles, before propelling his arm into the ground, energy building behind his knuckles burst at the contact with the sand.
Upon impact, the sand began sinking, and he fell into a type of cavern, a pile of sand beneath him and a hole to the surface above him. It seemed the stone that made up the ceiling of the hallway was old and weak, grinded by the sand to multiply and made brittle by wear. Prazutis thought to himself before looking at the two paths of the cavern, letting the force lead him forward down one way.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSQ3BJVMfAI John Williams- Snoke)
Prazutis thought to himself as he followed the long, narrowing path in front of him. From what he had heard, a crime lord had hidden this holocron away not long before the Battle of Yavin... over 30 years ago. But the holocron itself had been around assumably for thousands... yet it is still a vessel for so much power... and the consciousness of one individual.

As Prazutis approached the end of the cavern, he saw a doorway in front of him... an eerie red glow emitted from the doorway. This was what he had been looking for, he thought... He entered the doorway and observed, writing all over the walls... a stone pedestal... and on the pedestal, he found what he had came for.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_3qxr4mQCI Lucas King- Darth nihilus)

Prazutis took the black pyramid in hand, feeling the power within it as it glowed with a sinister Red aura. He observed the artifact a moment before hiding it away with him, turning and walking back out the way he had come...

[Master Buggie]

Buggie fell deeper into his meditative trace, falling away from his immediate surroundings and losing himself within the Force. Despite the shoddy appearances of nearly everything that surrounded him, there was serenity in the Force. Mos Espa was nothing to write in a holojournal about, but there was no shortage of lifeforms nearby for him to sense, each and every one of them radiating Force energy. Seeing was one thing; feeling was so much more.

At the edge of Buggie's senses, a strange anomaly arose. Like a small shockwave spreading through the furthest reaches of his consciousness, Buggie picked up on something far away from here. For some unknown reason, he felt a creeping chill crawling through his exoskeleton, as if his metaphorical hackles were being raised. Buggie had been trained to detect these patterns in the Force; unmistakably, it was a sign of the dark side.

Buggie focused upon the sensation in an effort to seek out its source. Instead, he was met with nothing but clouded visions, nothing concrete that he could draw any conclusions from. It was as if his mind was experiencing feedback, not unlike a faulty communications system. The information he sought returned nothing but chaff. The Force was not returning his call.

Trust your instincts, Buggie thought as he rose from the table and laid down a few credit chits. The Force had been willing to alert him; perhaps the rest was for him to eke out on his own.

[Neive Undant]

Prazutis looked to the hole that he himself had entered this cavern from, approaching and getting ready to make his exit before noticing a small data pad sitting on the other side of the hallway. He had been so focused, he had hardly noticed it, and completely forgot about Dowery’s request.
Putting his arm out, he called the datapad to him, his arm like a magnet as it threw itself into his hand.
Cato Neimoida, he thought... he wasn’t one to go about a mission blindly, but what individual there would want a hidden datapad?
He wasn’t sure but he didn’t plan on getting roped into the crime world any time soon, so he jumped up to the surface of the planet once again, walking towards his speeder in order to make a hasty return to the spaceport and an exit to Alliance space.

[Master Buggie]

Now that he was on the trail of something sinister, Buggie commed the docking bay that his ship was berthed at and requested a refueling. It would cost him to have his ship serviced ahead of schedule, but in matters such as these, there was no price too steep. Still, with no set path to follow him toward the presence he had detected, Buggie's intuition pointed toward a quick flyover of the area outside of Mos Espa. If all else failed, he would at least have his ship ready to depart Tatooine at a moment's notice.

Still in the Mos Espa spaceport, Buggie loitered, carefully watching the passersby quietly from a clay stone bench until his ship was ready for launch.

[Neive Undant]

Prazutis looked over the low landscape that the spaceport held as he approached again on his speeder, making sure that the glow from the holocron he held was properly covered, hidden and secured on him in a small satchel tightly around his shoulder, underneath the brown cloak that hid the imperial crests on his armor. Once he made sure, he guided the speeder back to the rental station he had borrowed it from.
He thought for a moment as he got off the speeder, walking into the corridors of the port towards his ship. It would probably have been a good idea to at least try and mask his presence in the force, in case any Jedi were in the vicinity. However, the holocron was a beacon of dark side presence. It would have done no good to hide his own force alignment when he had an artifact with ties much more powerful than his own. Which meant if there were to be any Jedi in the area, they would most definitely be making their way towards him.
He hoped for the best, there being none around to notice the dark presence, but made sure that his right hand was kept near his side in case he needed to pull his cloak back and bring his lightsaber into hand. Discreet but cautious, that was always the right way to do about things. Though, both of them have their upbringings and downfalls.

[Master Buggie]

Buggie grew restless; he knew he had felt a dark essence in the Force, spreading out like a shockwave from outside of the spaceport's settlement. His intuition told him to go to his ship, where he would be able to move more quickly and search his feelings on a wider level, but something within him remained doubtful, as if he was on the wrong trail. This lingering feeling disappointed Buggie the most. He was a trained Jedi Investigator and this situation should have come naturally to him after years of effort and practice, yet his skills seemed dull, gnawed away during his time with the Blue Star Pirates by lack of use.

Suddenly, his antennae shot up and Buggie's focus returned. The dark essence that the Force had lured before him initially had become more clear, as if it was approaching him.

On his two-toed feet now, Buggie slunk through the spaceport in an effort to close in on the lingering dark side presence. Using no Force abilities besides his senses, Buggie's concentration was now razor sharp. Faces passed him, none paying much attention, but they were ghosts in comparison to the presence he sought. When finally he found himself on the right path, he found another clay stone bench and seated himself, borrowing from his acting experience and striking as natural of a pose as he could. Buggie assumed the persona of an idle fringer, wasting away the hours before he could leave Tatooine again. As he thought about it... Wasn't that what he had been doing anyway?

Buggie picked up a palm full of sand and squeezed his chitinous hand into a fist, letting the sand slowly filter out between his three fingers. Keeping a multifaceted eye on the approaching foot traffic, Buggie waited for the precise moment the dark presence would come into sight. Coolly, Buggie tracked the presence as it grew closer, until finally...

A sentient in a brown cloak and dark armor rounded a corner a few hundred feet away. In that moment, Buggie did not withdraw from the Force. Instead, he reached his awareness through the Force toward the armored sentient, almost instantly attempting to dim his senses. Buggie knew that he wanted to follow this armored sentient and learn who he was and the nature of the dark essence that surrounded him, and to do that, he could not withdraw his own presence. To not stand out as the Jedi Master he was, Buggie attempted to remain as casual as possible, all the while calling upon the Force in and effort to dim the armored sentient's awareness of him. It was a skill he had used successfully in the past, but Buggie knew that if the dark presence belonged to the man, he would be a formidable Force user and might have enough willpower to detect what Buggie was attempting...

((OOC: Just trying to use Dim Another's Senses on you to get you to walk by without detecting my own Force aura. Tired of the usual Force Mask trick.))

[Neive Undant]

Prazutis took a moment as he walked within the crowd of people, his eyes narrowing. For just a moment, he half felt a disturbance... a shift in the force’s balance, as if a Jedi had been nearby just a moment ago and then vanished... it was strange. However, he thought to himself, the force didn’t lie. There was always an explanation for what you see within. He only had to sum it down.
Either there was a Jedi nearby and it had quickly left, or it was still near and had used its own abilities to hide its presence from Prazutis. Either way, he only continued his walk back towards his Trilon Aggressor, casual as to not bring any... unneeded... attention to himself. As if the holocron’s presence within the force didn’t do that enough already. He could only hope that it either gave off enough of a bluff to make the Jedi wary of engaging without provocation, or so little an aura that whoever was out there would give it off as someone distressed and let him be. Both were far stretches, but it was all he could hope for. Though, the Jedi weren’t ones to engage an enemy who had not started any kind of conflict. Only time would tell, Prazutis thought to himself, his silver ship barely in view as he approached it.