[i]“This is Leto, a Padawan of the Mercy Corps requesting aid. I am wounded, and cannot move. Location unknown. Lots of…trees…”[/i]

It was just as well Zhiss had turned on her commlink while Valsil verbally took himself through the exercise of what to do when the Miraluka, Shayal, interrupted him. Valsil and Zhiss were, until recently, Jedi in good standing with the Council, recent converts to the Revanchist cause, but she had the feeling that of the three, there was a need for her to stay rooted in the practicalities., [b]"She's right. We rescue your padawan now. We see if anyone else is in the immediate vicinity without lingering, because the Mandos shot us down, and they're going to hunt us down. We press on toward the objective and hope to rendezvous with other survivors en route,"[/b] even as she spoke, she was stripping off her sodden outer robes, figuring, perhaps, that they were wet and they would merely hinder her movement in this place. The image of the Jedi would simply have to suffer.

Personally, she hoped that she would avoid that Bothan colonel, if he survived, mostly because she could feel that the plan, which he certainly seemed keen on, no longer quite applied. She'd just learned a valuable lesson on what happened when Intelligence got it wrong and the pitfalls of depending on large organizations that deemed you expendable. Your fate was not quite your own. And being under the personal command of a martinet might...well, she and the Bothan didn't get on in the first place. Zhiss was too impulsive and arrogant for the man's liking. But she was decisive, at least.

The Miraluka turned to regard her a moment and the Falleen nodded back, and then, abruptly, she turned and started a jog in that direction, keeping her eyes on the surroundings -- this was a thickly layered beast of a jungle and that made her hesitate.

[i]"Leto, this is Knight Zhiss. I am with your master. I want you to hide yourself as best you can. Once you do that, concentrate and focus on your master, so we can use the force to find you Do not call out and stay off the comms, the Mandos are probably already hunting us. May the Force be with you."[/i] There were other things, perhaps, a Padawan could do, but Zhiss didn't have time to carry out a lesson while she was on the run through a jungle after being shot down, with warriors on the way. 

Just as they were reaching Leto's landing site, with the parachute hanging in the tree, they were greeted with bursts of repeating blaster fire, the boom of concussion and explosive grenades, and the high whine of a speeder skiff's engines mingled with the sound of jungle bursting into flame -- it was hard to see the thing above them through the canopy of green, purple and pink of the jungle's indigenous tree life, but it was easy enough to figure out what was happening. They were shooting at them from above, trying to get them at a distance rather than close and fight. But Mandos were tenacious. They'd come down eventually.

Zhiss didn't spring her lightsaber, but rather, tried to angle herself in a sprint away from Valsil and Ayessa, to draw the attention of the Mandos. She found purchase behind a tree trunk after the bolts started to follow her. Moments later, she head the sound of muffled explosions, the Mandos' jump packs igniting...