[On the Empress' Time Ship...]
At receiving the report from the Wildstrike that the beam-out would yet take some time, and being given the go-ahead to create random chaos at will, the away team members first looked from one to the other, and then to Ry. Shrugging, Rylan tells the team to split off again and cause what mischief they could, and kill any Imperials that stood in their way. They were to stay away from the Oira, however, as he wasn't too sure if the 'regenerated' Klingons were still up there or not -- and the last thing he wanted was to have 'regenerated' team-members beamed back to the Wildstrike!
Vyynd, Rylan and D`Tarik had gone one way, while the other team chose the opposite direction. After awhile of tossing DT's black balls of death into various rooms, or simply throwing a explosive charge in a room before quickly moving on, and mowing down any Imperials they happened to come across, Rylan suddenly noticed that the small group was apparently short one member. Calls across the ip turned up nothing, and they couldn't get a fix on D`Tarik's location with the Medical Officer's frequency. Worried about the smaller of the trio, Rylan furiously re-traces their steps, grumbling to himself as he hurried along. "He *never* answers the fvadt com!" he storms through the corridor, "Where in Areinnye is he?!" he stops to peek into a
room, his weapon at the ready to fire should an Imp suddenly decide to pop out. The room was empty. Everyone within it had died clutching their throats, thanks to one of DT's black balls.
Vynnd paces up behind Ry and places a hand on his shoulder to calm him, "Remain calm....he'll make himself known soon enough. The problem is who notices him first."
Rylan shakes his head at that, and turns away from the empty room to continue down the corridor. Passing a glance to Vyynd he agrees, "Ie. And he's na likely to go unnoticed, I bet." then adds with a mutter, "He's probably trying to heal io of the Imps!"
"Ie..." Vyynd nods as he opens another door. He takes a quick peek around the room then closes the door once again. An Imperial guard comes stumbling from around the corner, gasping for air as his hands desperately try to keep the blood escaping from his cut throat. He falls to his knees, and falls right in front of Rylan. Seeing movement out of the corner of his eye, Vyynd turns with a pistol toward the corner the guard just came around, andspeaks quietly to the erie`Arrain ahead of him, "....Ry....?"
Holding the disruptor ready, his other hand on the kalen at his belt just in case, Rylan pushes his back to the wall and steps over the dead Imp, inching himself closer to the corner. Hearing the sounds of a struggle coming from the other corridor, Rylan motions for Vyynd to approach and take a ready stance, then cautiously peers around the corner to see what was going on. Vyynd walks up slowly, his pistol still aimed towards the corner and peers around as well.
A girl, who looks to be perhaps about 17 or 18, stands in the other corridor holding two bloody, curved kalen-a. She's wearing a skin-tight black suit and has shoulder length black dread locks. She looks up at her last opponate's face as just stabs the Imperial in the heart. She drops the Imperial's dead body, and was just about to notice the pair of watchers, when Vyynd backs off to the other side of the corridor, still around the corner and hidden from the girl.
Rylan pulls back out of sight and looks to Vyynd. His brow raises as he quietly speaks to the Tal`Shiar officer, "Na io of ours...and na an Imperial?" Ry shrugs, at a loss as to how to explain the new arrival.
"Na..." Vyynd nods, just as quietly answering him.
Ry's eyebrows knit together, "Where she come from then? he peeks back around the corner.
Vyynd's head bobs around the corner insanely quick, "She's searching for someone....and she's killing Imperials..." he looks down at himself, "Which we're conveniently dressed up as..." he adds worriedly.
"Ie...ie....that thought had crossed my mind as well." Rylan frowns, then suddenly casts a sheepish grin at tr`Khaine, "Well...we can try to take her out, there are two of us after all, or we can just simply *ask* her who the Areinnye she is and where she came from. That might help. If she doesn't see us, we'll be able to tell her that we're na part of the Imperial fleet...." he pauses before adding, "I hope...."
Unknown to the boys, Sylah's head turns in their direction. She knows they are there, even if she can't see them. And she begins to creep closer. A few seconds more, and Sylah rounds the corner, her kalen-a at her sides. The girl looks like she's ready to attack, but she doesn't. Looking at first one surprised boy to the other, she finally speaks, "Au are na Imps are au? Au are more....worried...then angry like the others."
Though startled, Rylan didn't raise his weapon at her. He smiles charmingly instead. "Na. We're na Imperials, we're Republican. Um...exactly where did au come from? Ninte na from our ship..." Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Vyynd lowing his weapon a bit, but still standing ready to fire should the girl decide to make any sudden moves.
She tilts her head, ignoring Rylan's question, 'Au are from that... Wildstrike..?"
"Ie.." Rylan nods agreement, "And au are from...? What ship?"
"Na this io." she answers flatly.
Passing a glance at Vyynd, Ry raises an irritated brow at the girl,
"That's obvious.... na the Imperials...and na our own....but what ship?"
The girl starts to chew on one her dread locks then lets it fall out, "I already answered that question. Now out of my way."
Ry shrugs and motions down the corridor with his pistol, "I'm na keeping au."
Vyynd puts his pistol away, and suddenly asks, "Have au seen a man, short, dorky.... ranting...about here?" he holds his hand at about the height of D`Tarik.
"Au just described most Imperials..." the girl shrugs.
"Yeah, well this 'imperial' is wearing a lab coat...." Ry clarifies for her, "He's a member of our party who seems to have decided to disappear." He pauses slightly, then figures what the hell and adds, "Answers to the name of D`Tarik."
That stopped the girl, and she turns a raised eyebrow in Rylan's direction, "What did au say?"
Rylan looks at the girl a moment wondering if she's a little slow, then
repeats himself. "We're looking for io of our team members who
disappeared.... wears a lab coat...answers to the name of D`Tarik...."
Vyynd, already growing bored with the whole thing, looks both ways down the other corridor. "She hasn't seen him....."
"Na." the girl shakes her head, "I haven't seen him. I think, I will be going now." she pushes past the boys and practically runs away.
"Au sure about that?" Rylan asks tr`Khaine as he watched the girl run, "I think she was hiding something..."
"Every-io's hiding something." Vyynd shrugs in dismissal of the situation, then begins to search the bodies she left behind for any useable weapons.
As the girl rounds the other corner, several disruptor shots go off as the girl screams, followed closely by a thud sound. Ry, unable to resist going to help the 'damsil in distress', bolts down the corridor, and rounds the corner with with pistol ready.
The girl-assassin had somehow managed to kill three of the guards that had spotted her, but there one left and he was just about to fire on her when Ry took quick aim and squeezed the trigger, vaporizing the Imperial. As the girl turned her eyes back to him, Ry touches the tip of the pistol to his forehead a moment, then turns to head off back to tr`Khaine. He's stopped by her quiet question.
"Is D`Tarik all right...?"
Rylan pauses, then turns back to look at her. "I don't know." he shrugs. "He won't answer the com, and we can't find him." he suddenly smirks, "Course, he hardly *ever* answers a fvadt com anyway..."
"Okay." the girl turns this over in her mind, "Then he's okay. I need to find my team." she mutters to herself, avoiding eye contact with the
erie`Arrain before her.
Rylan takes a small step closer, afraid of startling her again and making her bolt down the corridor. Wondering what she's trying to hide, he asks quietly, "Au know who I'm talking about, don't au?"
"Perhaps." she replied, turning away from him entirely.
Ry didn't let that stop him. He walked around her to stand in front of her again. Smiling, trying to get her to make contact, he offers, "Well, au`rh lost...so why don't au try to help us find our lost member, and we'll help au look for the rest of ninte team? Okay?" he motions to the dead guards on the floor, reminding her silently that she had come close to being vaporized, "Safety in numbers and all."
"Because I don't need to see D`Tarik." she answers flatly, still refusing to look at him.
From the other corridor, Vyynd stands away from the last body he had
searched, and looks around. Seeing that Rylan hadn't returned, he paces back to him. He finds Ry talking to the mysterious girl from before, "I need to find a computer console..." Vyynd quietly informs him, as tr`Khaine's eyes keep scanning the hall for 'visitors' and peeks in and out of different rooms.
Ry nods at tr`Khaine's statement, then turns his attention back to the girl after hearing her last, "Au do know him, then? Why don't au want to see him?"
"I have my reasons." she answered simply. After a moment's pause she
slightly nodded, "Fine. Au help me. Which way do we go?" she finally
makes eye contact with her large, green eyes, then looks away again and
starts chewing on the end of a dread lock.
Trying to locate what Vyynd wanted on the isd of the ship's layout, Ry
ignores the girl, "Next corridor...three doors down is a terminal." he
lowers the isd and smirks in tr`Khaine's direction, "But the terminal's aren't working at the moment." Sylah, knowing that she had been ignored, only stands there quietly, waiting.
"Ie...io would still be helpful." Vyynd starts down the corridor, then stops to look back, "Au coming, or should au consider me lost as well?"
Ry motions the girl down the corridor after Vyynd, "Au`rh aefvadh to
follow." then quickly catches up to tr`Khaine, and jokes, "And au wouldn't be considered lost. If *au* didn't answer ninte com, I'd know au were dead!" he claps him on the back as the pair head off to find Vyynd's needed terminal.
Sylah stands there a moment longer, then answers quietly as she raises her curved kalen-a again, "Fine, then I will...." and walks quietly after the boys, keeping a slight difference behind them.
Vyynd sprints around the corner to the terminal, opens it and starts typing in random things. Rylan, figuring that the terminal wasn't going to co-operate with the Tal`Shiar officer, walks up at a leisurely pace, and leans casually against the wall near the terminal Vyynd busied himself with. "The computer systems are pretty bad off, au know." Ry shrugs.
"Ie." Vyynd replies absently as he keeps typing regardless.
"What are au looking for?" Sylah - who had still not supplied her name to the boys - asks as she approaches, "I can probably help."
Ry tosses a glance over to the girl, noting that she still held her bladed weapons in a 'ready' grip. "Nice kalen-a." he says off-hand, then shifts his attention back once more to Vyynd's typing.
"Hann`yyo." she replies quietly, "They were a gift from...my brother."
Rylan, not really caring, nods absently, then tries once more to raise
D`Tarik through the ip. When there's still no answer from the missing
member, Ry kicks the wall angrily.
"We won't find anybody just standing here." the girl starts to head off, "What is ninte friend's frequency?"
"The fvadt frequency isn't working!" Rylan almost yells at her in
frustration, "We would've found him by now if it was!" he begins to pace the hallway impatiently, waiting for Vyynd to find what it was he was looking for.
Sylah lowers her head and speaks quietly, "Don't yell at me..."
He glances back to the girl, then sighs and steps closer, "Sorry. I'm just worried, that's all. I didn't mean to take it out on au." he tries to smile, but fails at it.
"I have an idea." the girl says, "Let me try contacting him."
Ry raises a brow, "Ie. Doubt it will work...but it can't hurt to try, I suppose." Removing his ear-piece, he hands it over to the girl.
Sylah walks away from the two males, putting a slight distance between them so they couldn't overhear. Taking a deep breath she speaks quietly. "D`Tarik? Au there?"
Suddenly remembering something, Rylan reaches into one of his pant's pockets and pulls out a stolen computer-core 'floppy'. Holding it out to tr`Khaine he says hopefully, "Maybe this will help? This io's na corrupted, maybe au can access just this."
Vyynd takes the floppy without looking at it, "Hann`yyo....but I've got most of what I needed."
"And what was that?" Ry asks curiously, walking closer to peer at the
terminal.
Vyynd hesitates, then smiles, "Did au happen to see *what* D`Tarik put into the core while au were jaunting around in it?"
"Na." Ry shrugs with one shoulder, "He was just re-arranging rods....I
thought...."
"Mmm, it appears he wanted to test out some holoprograms as well....so *if* we want to find him....we could try intriguing his curiosity with some test runs?"
"Ie...that might work! Load them up and let them run then! Good thinking!" Ry claps him on the back, then chuckles, "And it'll be sure to create some random chaos around the ship as well." he grins, looking over the terminal's screen to see what kind of surprises were laying in wait for the Imperials now.
"Au think I spent all that time *looking* for D`Tarik's programming?!" Vyynd laughs, then closes the terminal, "Oh, the Imperials will have some problems too. He seems to like combat programs lately..." he muses that thought over.
Sylah heads back towards the other two, "He's in a lab of some sort... that's all I could get out of him. And I think he's hurt." she tries to keep from showing that she's worried, but isn't very successful at it.
Ry looks over at the girl concerned, "A lab?!" he pauses to glance at the isd, making a note of the nearest one, "Fvadt!! Do au know *how many* labs there are here?! How bad is he hurt??" he looks back up to focus on her again.
"He was having trouble talking..." That was all Ry needed to hear, he bolts down the corridor, headed for the nearest lab. Sylah watches him a moment, then looks over to Vyynd, and lowers her head.
Vyynd, who had just finished contacting Aeris to warn her of the rampant holoprograms running about, and the warning to watch out for more Republicans, informs the rest of the team to start searching any labs for the missing D`Tarik. When he closed the ip again, he looks towards the girl. After a moment he says quietly, "He thinks au`rh dead, au know." Sylah only looked back up at him, confusion on her features.
Figuring the girl wasn't going to confirm his deduction of her identity, Vyynd tries to contact Ry. "Any luck?" and is surprised to hear his own voice echoed from the ip that the girl still held. Frowning, Vyynd dashes off after the other boy, and past her. "Come on!"
"Na." Sylah answers quietly with a shake of her head, "I don't think so." she turns, and heads in the opposite direction.
Coming to a stop suddenly, Vyynd holds his hand out, "His communicator then?" he demands, and then the pair are startled by the sounds of rifle shots coming from the direction that Rylan had run in earlier. Sylah turns and runs down the hall, leaving a slightly confused tr`Khaine to watch her take off past him. "Great!" he mumbles, then runs after as well.
Rylan reaches the first of the many labs he had to search in short order. Glancing around at all the exploded bodies, he kicks a random part across the room as he didn't find DT, then bolts out and down the corridor to another.
Just as he was about to enter the third lab, he's greeted with rifle-fire as the doors open. Dropping to the floor he rolls out of the way, pulling his own weapon and taking pot-shots before the doors close once more. Ry positions himself at the side of the door, and takes a glance down both ways of the corridor to make sure he was alone. He pauses to take a breath, then waves a hand in front of the motion sensor, and waits for the disruptor fire as the doors open to get a trajectory on the shooters.
Crouching low, Ry pokes out from around the door-frame, takes quick aim and fires. Miraculously vaporizing one of the Imperials inside, he ducks back out of the way as more bolts head towards him with a fury. *Fvadt....* he thinks as the doors slide shut once more.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees movement from down the corridor, and he first moves his weapon to take aim again, then stops himself before he can squeeze the trigger. Seeing the girl from before running at a good clip, and heading directly for him, he waves her down before she could trigger the door to open. The girl immediately stops, looking at him curiously.
Seeing Vyynd approaching now too, Ry waves him down as well. The Tal`Shiar officer sees this, and sprints over to the far side of the corridor. From this far away from the door, Vyynd wouldn't be able to trigger the door's motion sensors, and he dives across to the other side of the door, bringing himself over to Ry.
"There's at least four more in there." Rylan informs the Tal`Shiar agent quietly as Vyynd positioned himself, getting his own weapon ready, "And they're all laying in wait for the fvadt door to open."
Sylah, remembering something she had been given while suiting up back on the Kalen, hits a button on her belt and cloaks. She stands and, though surprised that the doors to the room had opened, she ignores what the inhabitants of the room had tossed out into the hall, and rolls into the room, unheard and unseen.
Her sudden disappearance goes unnoticed by the two boys who's attention had just been drawn to the small, circular, flat, black object that had been tossed out from the other room and fell to the floor of the corridor -- quite near them.
"That's na good...." Ry whispers, then scrambles up and away down the hall.
Vyynd suddenly spins, kicking the object across the hallway, and into an access tunnel who's panel had been left open. A few seconds later, the bomb goes off... B*O*O*M!!...sending pieces of the access tunnel everywhere, including embedding chunks of metal and debris into the opposite wall.
Vyynd dives backwards and into the room to avoid the flying shrapnel.
Landing on his back, he looks up at the ceiling, and suddenly realizes he's in the middle of the room with the rifle-firing and bomb-throwing
Imperials. "...fvadt...."
Sylah however, creates a slight diversion by throwing one of her kalen-a right at the head of an Imperial. The blade sinks into it's mark, and she rolls behind a computer console as the dead Imp sinks to the floor. The other three watch their friend fall, with confusion on their faces. For just one second, silence descends on the room as the three Imps turn their eyes in Vyynd's direction. Before he knows it, the three Imps start sending off rounds of rifle shots his way.
Scared beyond thought, Vyynd randomly drops one of the Imperials on impulse, then scrambles up, dancing around the bolts sent his way. "Maybe..." he jumps, "...this..." he slides across a counter, "...wasn't...." he falls to the floor behind it, "...my *best* idea!!"
Sylah uncloaks as the power on her shield was running low. Drawing her other kalen, she dose a rag field jump at one and slices madly at him. Another Imperial sees this out of the corner of his eye, and brings his weapon to bear on the now-visible girl. She turns and spins kicks him in the face, causing a few teeth to fly as he hits the floor. She jumps on him and stabs him in the heart. Still perched on top of his body, she starts slashing him into unrecognizable pieces.
Rylan, from out in the corridor, had suddenly realized that Vyynd and the girl hadn't run from the bomb at all. Fearing the worst, Rylan steps out from around the corner to see the smoking embers of the access tunnel's innards...but no bodies. Running into the room, he pauses to see the kalen-a wielding lunatic, then walks around the splattering gore, searching for the lost members of his team. "Vyynd?? DT??" he glances back at the girl with a raised brow, "Um...I think he's dead now."
Vyynd sits up from behind the counter, pointing his gun, "HA!!" he stops, and looks around a bit, and sees Rylan smirking at him.
"...oookay....never mind." he stands, putting the weapon away. "Ie.. io accounted for..." he looks over at the girl as she stand up, covered in gore.
"Ie! Now if only we could find DT!" Rylan, looking furious, suddenly kicks over a computer console.
As Vyynd jumps over the counter again, and begins to raid the dead
Imperial's bodies, grabbing a few of those fun explosive pucks, Sylah tosses her dreads back and puts her hand on her hip after pulling her other kalen out of the dead mans head.
Ry glances over at the girl a moment, noting the feline way she moved. A small, sly smirk appears on his face a moment. But before he could say anything to this mysterious girl-assassin, he suddenly remembers Katara, and this snaps his mind back to matters at hand. "Um...." he paces the room a moment, then gets an idea. Taping on the isd which contained the layout of the ship, he finds what he's looking for -- on this very deck, no less!
"There!!" he exclaims as he begins to head out of the room. He suddenly stops, then turns back, standing in front of the girl. "Communicator, please?" he holds out his hand impatiently. The girl tosses it to him and Ry replaces the earpiece, "Hann`yyo..." he heads out of the room again, "Vyynd! I'm heading to the medlab. Let's hope he's there!"
Vyynd, stands from the body he'd been searching and follows Ry slowly. He's stopped suddenly by Sylah, who spins him around an plants a deep kiss on him. Just as suddenly as she had latched on to him, the girl pushes him away and heads out into the corridor, walking like nothing happend. Vyynd looks around the empty room for a minute, and brushes his hair back a bit. "Ooookay...." he says to himself, then follows after the other two.
Ry, having his weapon drawn and ready, vaporizes a guard that was in the corridor as he rounded the corner, and waits by the side of medlab's door for his other two group members to arrive. Doing the motion-sensor trick, still out of line of fire with his back up against the wall, he's relieved to note that no shots come out after the door opens. Sylah comes to a stop at Rylan's side, grinning widely. And as Ry turns to look her way, Vyynd approaches, with the same wide grin on his own face. Ry looks from one grinning face to another, then smirks, wondering if he should tell Aeris that she seemed to have competition for tr`Khaine's attentions now.
Before Ry had the chance to joke about the pair, Sylah suddenly loses her grin, and casts her eyes to the ground, becoming quiet. Vyynd, knowing what the smirk from Ry was about to bring, cocks his eyebrow at the erie`Arrain, then at the quiet Sylah, then waltzes into medlab. Ry shrugs, then follows, his weapon still drawn. Sylah, however, doesn't move from the corridor. Silently refusing to follow the boys, she stands in the corridor chewing on the end of a dread lock.
Glancing around at the room, with only dead Imps in site, Rylan calls out another worried, "DT?" as he walks amongst the bodies.
A shaky hand sticks out from behind a biobed at hearing Rylan speak his
name, "Huh....wah...?"
Ry spins and runs over, "DT? Au alright?" the smaller boy has a fat and split lip, and a swollen black eye. His arm lies at a strange angle, and his eyes are all glassy. Someone had worked him over pretty good. Reaching into the lab coat that was laying on the biobed next to him, some of his equipment spread out next to it, Rylan pulls a scanner out of one of the coat's pockets and scans the medical officer.
Confirming that DT's arm was busted up in several places, Ry gets a
cast-bone-knitter and places the battered arm within it. Putting DT's stuff back in the lab coat pockets, Ry then crouches down and lifts DT from the floor and lays him down on the biobed. Notifying the Wildstrike that DT's been found, he reports through the communicator, "Emergency beam-out to medical....lock onto the signal and beam DT up."
DT looks up at the taller boy as Ry reported in, "I did na tell them
anything...." he lisps through the fat lip.
Ry nods at him, "Ie. I know au didn't DT." he pats the boy's shoulder, then stands back a little as the green swirls surround the medical officer. "We'll get au fixed up." After DT dematerializes, he turns back to Vyynd, "Well...let's go help that girl find her own team then. A promise is a promise." he smiles slightly, then heads back out into the corridor.
Vyynd sighs in relief, then walks out of the medlab with Rylan. As they exit, tr`Khaine says to Sylah, "He's gone now..."
Ry nods at the girl, "Hann`yyo for the help....now," he motions down the corridor, "Ninte own team?"
Sylah looks up from one boy to the other. "Who is?"
Rylan raises a brow, and passes a glance off to Vyynd. "DT is."
"Oh, my...." slightest of pauses, "I mean, ninte friend. Good. Was he all right?" She looks up at Rylan and blinks before turning her face away again.
Ry only nods distractedly, "He seen better days. Na many, mind au...but a few." he shrugs, looking at the isd to locate a maintenance tunnel. "He'll be all right."
In the background, Vyynd raises up Aeries over the ip, "Any signs of
another group of saboteurs yet?"
"Okay." the girl's head bobs once, "I'm glad he...ninte friend...will be okay."
The thing that had been bothering him about the girl...but couldn't put his finger on... suddenly comes back to Rylan with a vengeance. Looking at the girl curiously, noting how she always tried to keep her face hidden from his, he asks, "How, exactly, do au know DT?"
Vyynd hears this and sighs. Shaking his head as he awaited an answer from Aeris, he tells the erie`Arrain quietly, "Why na ask her name, Ry...?" While on the ip, he finally gets a reply from t`Rharin,
"Ie..." Aeris reports in to tr`Khaine, "A shady bunch, I had to lose the Imperial robes for safety's sake."
Rylan, figuring it was all some kind of joke, smirks at the girl assaissin, "Wouldn't be Sylah by any chance, would it?" he chuckles a bit, remembering that they had run into DT's supposedly dead father.
"Na." Sylah shakes her head, her mind whirls to come up with a name and
settles itself on, "It's Llyriah."
Vyynd turns away from the pair, and continues the conversation to Aeris, "Ie, good. Any idea where they headed off to?"
"Nah, na really." Aeris replies, while on another part of the ship she
places a charge, "They headed off towards the upper decks..."
"Hann`yyo, I'll explain all this later..." Vyynd replies.
While the conversation between Vyynd and Aeris takes place, Rylan peers at the girl closely, trying to see her face through the dread locks she hid behind. She seemed familiar.... but where had he seen her? Pulling back a little, Sylah asks with a note of annoyance in her voice, "Au looking for something?"
Knowing that he's seen that face before, and could almost place where, Rylan replies slyly, "Au ever smile, Llyriah?"
"Ie." Sylah's annoyed voice responds coldly, still keeping her face out of sight, "When I have a reason to."
Vyynd clears his throat before interrupting Ry's train of thought, "Should we meet back at the lounge?" Not letting tr`Khaine's question distract him, Rylan only nods, still looking intently at the girl, waiting for her to finally slip and show her features more clearly. Vyynd tells this to Aeris, "We'll meet back at the lounge, we've located D`Tarik and he's been beamed to the ship, so resume usual chaos...over."
Sylah shifts awkwardly under Rylan's watchful gaze. "Why are au looking at me like that?" she asks angrily, then adds quickly after hearing Vyynd's statement, "If au are going to meet ninte team...I should probably go."
Filing away what little he could see of her face for future reference, Rylan says with a too-serious-for-Ry expression on his face, "Ninte people are on the upper decks...do au wish an escort?"
"Fine." Sylah agrees, not seeing any real way short of killing the pair to get them to leave her alone. "But once we get up there, I will find them on my own." Sylah answers curtly, thinking to herself that knowing how sensitive the Kalen's crew was, they would probably 'recruit' the boys if they found them tagging along with her.
"Alright..." Ry motions her off down the corridor, "There's an access
tunnel this way."
Walking past him, almost pushing him out of the way, she heads to the end of the corridor where a panel awaited. The two boys glance to each other, and follow. When Sylah had the panel open, she climbs in with a "I prefer to lead...."
As the girl-assassin's form disappears through the access tunnel's opening, Rylan turns to Vyynd with a confused look and whispers, "She looks an awful lot like...." he hesitates, then shakes his head, "But she's supposed to be dead...."
Vyynd nods and - thinking that Rylan referred to Bhy'hie, DT's old girlfriend that died while on ch`Vania - whispers back, "Ie. But I think she resembles D`Tarik a bit more, though...."
Rylan only has the time to reply with 'Ie...' before Sylah pokes her head out of the tunnel to cast a quick, questioning look to the boys.
"Au guys coming?" then disappears through the passage way again.
Ry shrugs and climbs in after, hearing Vyynd whisper to him and smile,
"Careful where those eyes go..."
Ry smirks back and shrugs, "Well, I can't very well keep from looking...." then adds with a frown as his own form disappeared from Vyynd's view, "Never promised Katara I wouldn't look....only na touch."
"Hey," Vyynd suddenly shouts at him, "She touched me first!" then quickly climbs in to the tunnel after.
After awhile, the trio reach the ladder. Keeping to the same formation, Sylah accends it first rather slowly, followed by Rylan then Vyynd. As they climb, Rylan suddenly breaks the silence with, "So....Llyriah," he unconsciously put an almost sarcastic emphasis on the name, "How'd au meet DT, anyway?"
"Do au need to know?" Sylah's annoyed voice comes back.
"Ie..." Ry smirks as he looks up, running an appreciative eye over the view in front of him, "I do..." then throws a 'oh, elements, au should see this!' look down to Vyynd.
Sylah shakes her head slightly at the boy's persistence, "He's..was..a
friend of mine. When I was growing up."
"Uh huh." Ry shifts his attention back to her, "Well...I'm sure he'd be happy to hear that au`rh alive and well."
"He wouldn't know either way." Sylah grumbles back, and keeps on climbing, "We were just friends. We lost contact with each other after he went to the Academy."
"Well...DT doesn't have that many friends, actually, so I doubt he'd have forgotten au." Ry smirks as his eyes check out the view above him. Suddenly realizing something odd about the girl's remark, Ry's brow knits together as he pauses in thought. Quietly, he adds to himself, "He never mentioned a Llyriah to me...."
Sylah, furious over the emotions she had been picking up from the boy,
suddenly calls down angrily, "Could au do me the favor of stop thinking of me like that!" then adds, "And stop looking as well!"
Ry shrugs and keeps right on looking, "Well, I can hardly help it...au are *right there*, au know. And au are moving a bit slow. If au don't want me looking, move faster then."
"Ie, well, this is as fast as I go." the girl's mood changed completely. No longer angry or annoyed. "Look all au want, I don't give a fvadt."
Ry shrugs, then tries to keep his eyes focused on just the rungs of the
ladder that his hands were to reach for next. "Sorry...I don't mean to
offend au..." he smirks, and sneaks another peek, "Just...appreciating the view is all. But I'll try na to look, okay?"
Sylah actually giggles at that, "Eh, enjoy what the elements gave me." And starts to climb faster.
Ry's total confusion at the girl's sudden mood-shift is shattered when Vyynd breaks into the conversation, "Umm...exactly which floor are we going to...?"
Ry wraps an arm around a rung to steady himself, and glances at the layout on the isd, "She's going to climb the ladder bout 6 decks up."
Silence seems to descend on the small group after that. And after a little while longer of climbing, Ry stops just below the floor she needs, "Here's ninte deck. Will au be all right from here on out, or do au want us to escort au further?"
"Don't care." the girl-assassin replies back coldly, pulling herself off the ladder and into the tunnel.
Glancing back down to Vyynd, Ry asks, "ETA on the other teams arrival to the lounge?"
"Seven surien-a." Vyynd nods, knowing they would need to hurry it along if they were going to make it on time.
Ry shrugs at the girl, "We`ll leave au here then. Jolan`tru." Vyynd calls out another 'jolan`tru' then slides down the ladder. Rylan pauses for only a moment, waiting for Vyynd to clear, then slides down himself without another word to her. Sylah watches the pair slide out of sight, then turns and walks down the tunnel to regroup with her own crewmates with her head hung low.
|