Mara walked around her desk and took a seat, listening to the student’s tune change. As she faced the young hybrid, she folded her fingers into each other. Letting another moment pass, she turned to a top drawer. Her hand pulled out a datapad and wordlessly passed it over to him. On it was a three woody-stemmed plant with fungus growing on it. 

“Within the catacombs underneath the Academy is that plant. Find it and break off a small section, the sticky sap will lessen the symptoms when swallowed. Do not taste too much. A small amount will do.” 

She gestured for him to take the datapad with him as she retrieved a jar. It thumped on the table then she slid it over him. 

“If you want to gain any favor from me, I require only one whole stem from it. Including the roots. The datapad will show you the general areas to look in order to find it. If you come back alive, I’ll consider giving you limited private lessons.” 

Hai took the datapad after giving it a once over to try and memorize the plant and grabbed the jar with it. His grin got a little less tight and a bit more smirking, some of the confidence he’d arrived with returning now that he’d been given a potential way out.

“Consider it done. I’ll be back with the sample in short order.”

With that, he turned to walk out, already thinking over where the best place to start searching might be.

“If you manage to survive, be less foolish and open when you aim to gain favors. You will learn quickly it’s an exploitable weakness.” Mara’s ice-cold voice chased after him. 

“I’ll keep it in mind.” Haiki muttered back to her as he walked out, not caring if she actually heard or not and trying to shake off his wounded pride considering his life was literally on the line.

From there he would go to the area used for sparring practice, hoping to break into a weapons locker and get one of the training sabers stored there for protection. Fortunately, he always carried a toolset on hand and between that and his innate talent for manipulating machinery with the Force he thought his chances were good.

He had only gone to the academy catacombs once before on a training exercise, but he still knew the way down well enough to get to the entrance. Once there he had Jana shine a light for him and use her sensors to try and map out the cave ahead as best she could.

“The thing has to be here somewhere Jana, try and fine-tune your sensory equipment while I look the inefficiently old fashioned way…”

As the droid’s light shined into one of the numerous tunnels, three pairs of eyes reflected the light back. A deep growl echoed off the walls as they vanished once more. 

Hai flattened himself back against the closest tunnel wall and stilled everything about himself as much as he could: his movement, his breathing, even his heartbeat. He called the training saber he’d stolen to his hand with the Force but didn’t ignite the blade, instead of straining to sense the creature in the darkness before inching forward again, this time as slowly and quietly as possible.

The silence continued to settle in the scenery. Nothing seemed to move toward him. 

Hai proceeded again but with greater caution, trying his best to silence himself as much as possible, drawing on what he could remember of his survival training for dealing with predators. At the same time, he tried to relax his body and seem unaware of the danger. Let the creature or creatures think he’d be easy prey. He briefly signaled Jana to ready the few combat countermeasures she had installed and continued down the tunnels.

Jana’s light caught a brief glimpse of something in the nearby shadows. It froze then turned to face the droid's light. A slender reptilian hound bore its several rows of sharp teeth. Its hunches rose on its as it straightened up from its stalking posture. About thirteen-foot in high of raw muscle covered with scales and spikes along the spine. It glared at the young acolyte before it charged right at him. Jaws widened and ready to sink it into the unprotected flesh. 

Hai fought down his brief urge to panic and instead waited trying to read the creature’s movements and trust in his reflexes and the Force. As it charged in Jana shrieked a warning and he whipped the training saber up, aiming to ignite it right into the creature’s mouth as the beast opened wide to bite him.

A hiss and smell of charred flesh indicated that he struck true. A loud scream erupted from the creature's lungs as it backed away. Another blur launched itself at Hai from his left while a third one attacked Jana.  

Hai’s right arm suddenly started to go numb and unresponsive just as he whirled to confront the second blur, but adapting quickly he just let go with his right hand and swung with his left along with the pivot. Jana responded to the charging monster by shooting out a length of fiber cord to entangle it and then firing out little bolts of electricity to discourage any followup if it broke free.

Another yelp and the second creature backed off. It whipped about and ducked back into the shadows where it came from. Its yellow eyes reflected lights back before it melted into the darkness. Meanwhile, J4n4’s opponent became entangled in the cord. It snarled then began to struggle free, left behind by its pack members.