[b]Lea, Xid & Allanar | Ellri & Fallen[/b]

Xid’s eyes stared off into space, within his individual cell after his encounter with the Sith. Confusion, among other mixed emotions, seemed to pound upon his mind leaving him feeling mentally exhausted. The Padawan tried to make his head go numb just to ease the burden only to fail miserably as usual. He bumped his head backwards, each thump smacked soundly against his skull, a faint hope it would drive some clarity into his mind. At the sound of the main cell door opening, Xid’s body moved upright. He watched the troopers toss Allanar back into the cell but they did it in a rather hasty fashion, something rather concerning to him, as he pulled from the cot and waited until the men retreated back out. Hand slammed against the button to release his energy barrier allowing him to exit towards the crumbled Jedi. 

At first, Xid thought he would be out cold. However his first impressions were shattered when he bent downwards to check the man’s vitals.

Lea woke up from her bored mediation when the cellblock door opened. A pair of troopers moved in, carrying the Jedi Allanar back in. She saw that Xid got out of his cell moments after the troopers left, probably to check on Allanar. She slowly got to her feet, wincing slightly as blood once more rushed through them. “I really should spend less time meditating” she muttered to herself. It did not help her body to meditate all the time.

She deactivated the energy barrier on her cell and walked over to where Xid and Allanar were. “How’s he doing?” she asked, curious. All the while as she walked over, she was looking with interest at how his skin was covered in those red rashes that had been in a couple of places after his previous session. She thought it rather intriguing.

Xid took a knee, letting his fingers slide across the hot skin to the quickening pulse. The pair of fingers held there as he measured the rate and grew more concerned. His eyes took stock of Allanar’s other symptoms from the reddish skin to the fever and felt a sense of helplessness wash over him again. He needed to know what was going on but to do that would required the right equipment. Things he knew weren’t able to be found while stuck in a cell. Xid bite his lip, in both slight frustration and annoyance at his own weakness. 

“Not good that’s for sure. The bad part, I can’t know much more than that without the proper equipment and being stuck in this cell won’t solve that.” Xid admitted, his fingers pulled away from Allanar to slip through his hair. 

Lea knelt down beside him, staring in wonder at his arms, where the rashes were spreading almost so one could see it. Reaching out, she turned his hand over and saw that for some strange reason his fingernails were darker than before. “Not sure he’s sick. I haven’t studied diseases, but I haven’t heard of any disease that can do this.”

Just out of curiosity, Lea opened up her Force Sight, still not quite used to how that worked. From what her master had last explained, it didn’t use the eyes at all, instead literally seeing the midi-chlorans or something like that all around. Focusing on where her she knew Allanar lay, she saw that there was a bright swirling light there. She then focused on Xid, just to see the comparison. There the light was also bright, but not swirling about. “Odd.” she murmured. “His medi-chlorans seem to be swirling a lot. That ain’t normal, is it? And why’s he all sorts of colors in the Force?”

The chaos of Allanar’s Force Signature made Lea’s head ache, so she shut it back down, feeling relieved when her sight returned to normal. It had not been long ago that her master had taught her most of what she knew about Force Sight, so she still hadn’t gotten used to it. Suddenly Allanar’s eyes snapped open, but when Lea waved her hand before them, there was no response, so it was clear that he wasn’t seeing anything with them. Where they had been bright, sapphire blue before, they were so tinged with yellow now that they could hardly be called blue. That, Lea knew with certainty, was not normal.

Xid had been confused at the word she used until she mentioned the Force. Then it all clicked at what she meant, his knowledge only a bit, and immediately corrected her out of habit. “You mean Midi-chlorians, they are swirling? That means his Force connection would be out of sorts and that’s likely the source of the symptoms.” 

When Allanar’s eyes came open, Xid fought not to jump right out of his skin at the suddenness of it. His face leaned closer and noticed the same thing Lea did as his fingers pulled open the eye a bit more to examine the iris. He had a bad feeling about this, a very bad one. Xid’s core seemed to be shaken by the more he discovered and none of it seemed good. “If he was a machine, I could fix him easily but he’s not. And there’s nothing else I can do to solve this.” 

“This looks to be more than just connected to the Force. Darth Nyiss has done something more, I think.” Lea listened to Xid speaking about repair, thinking it a bit odd how he compared people to machines. “I barely understand up and down on a lightsaber, so you probably know a lot more than me. It took me a while to figure out how to get cellblock doors to unlock, and that’s mostly the extent of what I know.” While they were both watching, Allanar’s skin continued turning red, looking less and less like it was irritated and more like it was natural. Whatever was happening to him, it was clearly happening pretty fast now. 

Xid didn’t like watching the scene yet he couldn’t tear his eyes, filled with pity and fear, away from Allanar. His hand shifted to the one shoulder in an attempt to comfort Allanar though it was clear there was no stopping the result now, the sight made the Padawan sick inside to see the man suffer.
 
His eyes turned to Lea when she mentioned how she barely understood a lightsaber then come to the figuring how to unlock the Cellbock doors. For a moment or two, Xid stared at her with a dumbfounded look while the words registered. It grew sad shortly after when Xid realized it was likely too late to stop the man’s suffering, namely since he knew little of what was happening, as he spoke. “Machines are easier for me to understand, always been. Even when working with Tolun Fi-”

Xid stopped a moment, slightly choked on the words before he forced himself to continue. “Now many know that I think in a different way than others, so they mistake my comments for compassion or something else when it’s not. There was only one creature that seemed to understand me and it didn’t end well. As for the door, I wish I knew that sooner and I could tried to seek a way off this ship. Even built a scanner to see what’s up with his Force now that I know what I’m looking for. Maybe figure a way to fix this.” 

“Unlocking the door is easy. I think whatever imperial designed this ship meant for Jedi to unlock them easily.” She listened to Xid speaking of a scanner for the Force. She had not heard of any technology that could interact with the Force like that. “I didn’t know such technology is possible. How can you examine the Force with technology? Isn’t that impossible?” She asked, confused.

“That’s strange, it’s not logical to want your prisoners to be walking around. Not when they could cause trouble.” Xid said, his other hand ran through his hair in thought before he continued.“Technically there aren’t any machines that can scan the Force. However, I can possibly try to build it if I ever figure how to reach its purpose. See I’m limited by my knowledge of what I need for the machine in order to reach its goal. Once I have that knowledge, it’s smooth sailing from there.”

He couldn’t help but smirk at the only thing he could manage to do well. A little depressed it did him no good now, his eyes softened by the emotion as he sighed. 

“Sith are strange. All the ones I’ve been tortured by were, at least.” Lea had over her weeks in captivity become a little jaded with the torture. The red tinge to Allanar’s skin was slowly solidifying, with hardly any of the skin still showing that had any of his old skin color. Lea did not know how to explain it, but for some reason it looked… right… “Odd. It doesn’t look like he’s in pain.”

“Wonder if it stopped?” Xid’s question popped out without expecting an answer, followed by another. “I wonder if it’s too late or do we still have time to figure it out?”

“No idea. I don’t understand all this science, so I can’t say. My master never lectured me on this level of genetics. Not that I think I would have understood it if she had even tried.” Lea leaned over, looking down at Allanar. His eyes were still unfocused, but it almost looked like he was smiling. A pretty strange image considering how his crimson skin stood in contrast to his pearly white teeth. Suddenly, Allanar’s eyes focused clearly upon Lea. He glared straight at her, then hissed, “Jidai! Quorit.” Before she could even begin to think on what he had said, she felt her throat tighten up, the familiar feel of Force Choke.

When Allanar’s head jerked to Lea and spoke a language he didn’t understand, Xid’s eyes widen in shock. That’s when he raised his hand, clawed and tight, towards her and held it there. At first Xid was confused until he turned to Lea. Her eyes filled with horror as she clawed at her throat at something invisible. The image of his first encounter with the Sith Lord and how he had carried him clicked in Xid’s mind, his head jerked back to Allanar’s madden expression. Without thinking too hard, his hand fisted up then shot a punch right at the man’s jaw. 

Allanar jerked away with the punch, for though it was weak, it worked to distract him. He instantly released his Force hold on Lea, staring up at them both in shock. She fell back to the floor, hyperventilating a little. “What did I do? What’s happening? I am so sorry!” he shouted, clearly confused and horrified by what he had just done. He could not remember much, but he served the Jedi order, not the stinking Sith!

When Xid’s fist had hit, he bit his tongue to stop himself from uttering something foul...out loud at least. Fire rushed up from the impact as it flared within his wrist that shouted he had injured himself. Gingerly, his arm pulled close before he curled it against his body, cradling it. [i]By the Force, that hurt![/i] Xid’s mind screamed at his stupidity. When Allanar’s voice spoke out, his eyes rose upright and looked in the man’s direction. If there was any doubt possible, it was gone now in Xid’s mind. He was slightly relieved to see the confused expression as the man looked from Lea, still recovering, to him completely bewildered. 

“It’s alright.” It was the first word out of Xid’s mouth, more of a habit than meaningful in the moment. “We’ll figure it out, there’s still time. Give us a moment to recollect and stay calm, kay?” 

Lea was slowly coming back to herself, having been brought perilously close to unconsciousness by his choke. She looked over at Xid, seeing how he was cradling his right hand, a pained expression on his face. “Thank you, Jedi. You saved me. Thank you.” She crawled over, then gave him a gentle hug.

Xid’s head faced Lea, when she spoke, her skin looked slightly less blue now. He let a slight smile cross his face for a moment and then started to speak upon seeing her crawling over only to be silenced when she hugged him. A blush, bright red, had flooded his face and seemed to spread right down to his toes. He was slightly stunned before his smile turned to a sheepish one. “Well, I couldn’t just stand and let it happen. And you're welcome.” 

Rather than answer, Lea simply smiled at him. There was no need for words. She heard Allanar muttering in the background, but from the lack of shock, it was pretty apparent that he had not seen how his skin had changed. He could not, of course, see that his eyes were completely yellow by now. She eventually let go of Xid, then crawled over to one of the walls, leaning against it.