Prompt Choice: Enemy Mine
Character Rival: Ryan Neale #10609
Malice blinked awake, realizing instantly she was somewhere unfamiliar. Leaning aginst the back wall, she seemed to be in some kind of prison cell. She tried to think of how she had gotten here, but the last thing she remembered was creeping over a hill in an attempt to get some information on the Odan Urr fighters nearby. She'd volunteered herself for the mission, knowing her stealth abilities outmatched anyone else on her team. Had she even gotten close enough to hear anything? She didn't think so. Something must have happened before she could reach them.
"Oh good, you're awake." A voice called from the other side of her cell. She looked up, scowling immediately. The voice belonged to a man who wore a fairly smug expression, his arms folded as he looked down at her. His dark blonde hair was cut fairly short, and he had very dark blue eyes. He reeked with light side energy, and Malice could only assume she'd been captured at some point. Sighing mostly to herself, she frowned at the thought of what Selika would say whenever she managed to escape this cell.
"I'm Ryan," The man began again. Malice raised an eyebrow at him. "I'm here to guard you, so don't get any ideas. I'm armed, you're not. It would be a very unwise choice to try anything."
She didn't reply, already focusing on trying to find a way out. She wasn't sure where she was, but she figured it was most likely somewhere on Florrum that they'd made a temporary base for holding prisoners. Even if she got out, she wouldn't make it far. There would be more enemies walking around, and she was likely to stick out like a sore thumb.
"So, you're Malice, right?"
The man's voice interrupted her thoughts, and she shot a glare at him from the corner of the room.
"I've heard about you. You're the Nexu girl, aren't you?" His eyes clearly showed his interest, and he didn't seem to care really at all that she was a dangerous sith.
"Yeah, I guess you could call me that." She said cautiously, eyeing him. He grinned at her response, seeming to get even more interested. She met his eyes coldly, and he seemed confused for a moment.
"What's wrong?"
"I don't know if you've noticed or not but I'm not exactly in an ideal situation. " She snapped back. He flinched slightly at her voice, frowning.
"That's true I suppose. You were the only one we managed to capture, though. we set an explosion off and you were close enough to it that it hit you enough to knock you out. The rest of your clanmates escaped, though." He explained.
So that's what had happened. Malice was glad at least that no one else had been captured. She looked back up at her guard, her mind beginning to turn. He was friendly, and she sensed a lot of emotion in him, something he didn't seem shy about expressing, either. She turned her back to him, wanting to try to do some more thinking. He seemed like an obnoxiously pleasant person. He was probably a gentleman, and she wouldn't be surprised if his goal currently was to make a new friend. Jedi really were pathetic. Though this is the closest she'd been to one since arriving at her own clan, she knew enough to know she didn't plan on coming into contact with them again.
"Anyway, I'm not sure what we plan to do with you after the fighting is over, to be honest." The man admitted. Malice looked over her shoulder at him, trying to pick up any small details that might be useful.
"I'll probably be killed." She said matter of factly, shrugging.
The Jedi looked slightly worried.
"I'm sure they wouldn't. The Jedi are just in their actions. Perhaps they would ransom you back?"
"No one is going to pay you any amount of money for me back. It's not how we are. I'll be killed, and your precious Jedi will have the blood of a double murder on their hands." She turned her head back around, waiting for his reaction. Her pregnancy hadn't been something she'd made known to a lot of people. Selika knew and that was about it. Not that it needed to be a secret, Malice just wasn't one to go spurting her personal information off to anybody she saw.
"Wait...you're not...are you?" Ryan's voice, while at the start held disbelief, had now turned to shock. Even if she wasn't entirely, her unborn child was innocent. She felt him start to pity her, which is exactly the thing she'd been hoping to feel. She grinned to herself as she heard him pace a few lengths of the cell door. She brought her arm up slowly to her mouth, biting into it. She stiffened at the pain but didn't stop until she felt her own blood begin to well out of the wound, coating her tongue in the taste of iron. Looking behind her, the Jedi was still pacing, now seemingly deep in thought about her current circumstance. A drop of blood fell from her arm and onto the stone floor, and she hissed, breathing sharply. She hoped it seemed genuine.
"You're bleeding," Ryan said, gripping the bars on the door to her cell and looking in. She looked down, pretending it had been her first time seeing it.
"Hmm, I'm not actually sure how that happened." She said, examining the wound. She touched it with a finger and flinched like it had been very painful. Hopefully, the Jedi wouldn't be able to resist helping a damsel in distress.
Her plan seemed to work, as she heard him grumble under his breath about being quick and that no one would see, as he tore some material from his shirt, unlocking and stepping into her cell. She didn't move right away but allowed him to come closer. He noticed her stiffen as he got closer and held his hands up as a sign of good intentions.
"whoa there. I'm just going to get that wrapped up for you. We don't want you losing a lot of blood." He approached carefully, kneeling to her level and taking her arm gently. His eyes now held nothing but concern and worry. Strange that he had only known her for however long she'd been in this cell, and yet seemed to care so much about such a small injury.
He tied the wrapping off, and while Malice saw the blood seeping through, it had slowed a considerable amount. She hadn't punctured anything important, and it would've stopped on its own in time, but this was going to help it get there a bit faster.
"There you go, good as-"
The Jedi's sentence was cut off as Malice faced him quickly, placing a hand on his head. Drawing on her force powers, she wove a new image in his mind. She searched until she found a face she assumed was his higher up, and threw his image outside the cell. She couldn't see anything, but Ryan would see it as if it was really happening. He stood up quickly, making a frantic saluting motion.
Malice didn't need to have physical contact with him to continue the illusion, so she simply sat and watched him talk to the wall, truly believing he was being spoken to. Her illusion of his superior told him she was being moved to a new location because Clan Plagueis had begun to close in on their location. They wanted to move her there first, to ensure that the new area would not be attacked by their rivals. Ryan nodded, seemingly relieved to hear their prisoner would not be killed. He turned to her as his superior walked away, pulling a pair of restraints out. She eyed them before looking back to him.
"I need to put these on you so we can get you moved. They aren't going to kill you, just move you. I promise to keep you safe." she could see that he meant it, and almost pitied him. He was so good hearted. Perhaps this was just the lesson he needed to show him how foolish he was.
She stood slowly as he walked into the cell again, and pulled her arms behind her back, binding them together. He grabbed them, pushing her forward and out of the cell. She tried to look as irritated as she could as they passed a few pairs of what she could only assume were more Jedi. They didn't seem to think much of it, and continued on without a word. She refused to move a few times, earning her a shove from the Jedi behind her, which was most often followed by an apology.
Once they'd finally made it outside, Malice could see just how much damage the fighting had done to the planet. There were entire parts of the planet blasted away from different explosions, and a few injured bodies lay strewn about the ground. She slowly replaced the image with another illusion. This one showed a clear path to the new location, and a few soldiers waiting to escort them. They walked in silence, Malice pausing to struggle for effect every now and again. She couldn't reach out to try to sense her clan without losing the illusion, so she'd have to time her actions perfectly. She glanced back at the base Odan Urr had taken refuge in. It was simply a large cave looking structure, and she was glad to be out of it.
The pair of them continued walking, and Malice was actually surprised they hadn't been stopped at all. Perhaps the others had thought she was being taken out to be killed. It was the only reason that made sense to her as to why they would have allowed this man to single handedly take her out of the facility. She was cuffed and being led out to the middle of nowhere in their eyes. It would make sense to kill her away from the rest of the group.
Finally, once they were far enough away, Malice dropped the illusion, and Ryan took a step back.
"What? I don't understand. Where did the troops go?" He asked, blinking and looking around. When his gaze fell upon Malice, he looked hurt and betrayed.
"Did you do this? I was trying to protect you and take care of you."
"I don't need anyone to take care of me. I'm not a child." She spat back at him, her hate clearly evident. "I do have to thank you, though. I would never have made it out without you." She flashed a smile at him, and she saw his expression darken ever so slightly. She felt him begin to reach out with the force and laughed. Confusion and fear clouded his face, as his attempt at using the force ended in failure. She'd been working on this trick for a long time and hadn't gotten to properly test it out just yet. Realization sunk in as the Jedi realized his connection to the force had been disrupted.
"What did you do to me?" He demanded, now beginning to panic. He released small spurts of force energy, but nothing even close to what he had been attempting to do.
"A lot less than I would have liked, trust me." She purred, enjoying toying with him. "I promise you, I would love to stay and torment you until you begged me to end your life, but I have places to be."
Keeping half of her concentration on continuing to suppress his force ability, she used her illusion ability again to simply darken the Jedi's sight. He would see nothing until she was far enough away that her connection would break. Until then, he was blind in every sense of the word, and she watched with satisfaction as he dropped to his knees, feeling around on the ground and in the air for her. Smirking, she leapt forward, landing solidly on the ground nearby, and began her trip back to the clan. She ran forward, wondering what she had missed while she had been gone.