Even though Minna was aware that her distination lay at least a good three day's travel from the coordinates marking the hiding place of the Hornett, she knew she wouldn't be bored.

Not in the least. There was too much to ponder upon, and too much to prepare for in advance. For when she finally came into orbit around Onderon's "Demon Moon," Dxun, she knew that from that moment on her life would be placed in the gravest of danger.

Well... maybe not as far as the Grand Scheme of Things goes, but far from moseying along Easy Street, she thought to herself as she sipped a small glass of the blue liquor. The fiery liquid seared down her throat and into her stomach, where it rebounded up to the top of her head. From there it cascaded gently down through her body in a gentle waterfall of what couldn't be described as anything else but "warm fuzzies."

Except for her mind. That was somehow completely bypassed, and left totally unaffected. One of the reasons she was so smitten by the stuff. Her concentration upon the notes in her hand was scarcely touched as she took another sip.

Dxun... called the Demon Moon, and for good reason. Way back in the yesteryears, around 4,000 years ago, in fact, it was the hidey-hole of Mandalore himself.

It was where he and his warriors hid, and from whence they sprung out like oil-blots to rage and rampage and ruin and do whatever the hell else it was they so liked to do.

Assisted along the way with their infamous armor, and secret weaponry.

Of which the Temblor toxin was but a small part.

Now the little Bothan spy sighed a bit, and flipped a page. That didn't help; the information she was reading grew even more horrendous.

Most people avoided Dxun, for it was populated by wild and ferocious beasts. It was rumored to yet harbor the descendants of Mandalore and his warriors, although nothing had come from the moon since his death but rumors and whispers... at least up until about a hundred years prior to the Battle of Yavin, when they up and burst out from hiding long enough to totally exterminate the Ithullan race. Undefeatable they were, until a group of jedi killed off the last remnants of their tribe, just before the start of the Clone Wars....

Or at least everyone thought that was the end of it. Actually no one really quite knew....

And all Minna knew was that the toxin had been created by the Mandalorians, and they hid out on Dxun, filled with an overabundance of lethal life.

Toxins are made from plants... and antidotes are made by their creators, if they are wise.

Minna didn't doubt for a moment that the Mandalorians hadn't been wise. So she continued to devour every bit of information she could glean about the ancient Mandalorians, whether it came from her own data banks or from something as antiquated as the book she was holding.

Somewhere on Dxun is the key, the antidote. I know it. I'll find it.

I have to....

She let the book close quietly and merely sat, a vacant expression coming into her eyes, and stared off into the smears of stars that outlined her viewports, looking for all the world like horizontal bars to a cage. Her blue funk was abruptly interrupted as a long-range sensor bleeped for attention.

Quickly, she sat up, and let her fingers dance upon her control panel. The monitors promptly obliged her by showing her an incredible sight:

Behind her and fast disappearing among the starstreaks was... an escapepod?

She quickly slowed to sublight, and hailed the pod.

"Heaven's Forbiddance here; do you need assistance?"

Leaving the connection open for reply, she settled down for a short wait.

I'll help if they need it, but I sure can't hang around here forever, she thought to herself as the seconds began lengthening into minutes.

Maybe a ship malfunctioned, and an escapepod slipped out of it, she thought to herself as she waited.

Then again, maybe someone is inside, hurt or dying...

Or already dead.

Her hovering hand trembled. Now was not the time to have to deal with this; there was another life on the line, and a helluva lot of credits -- in her favor -- to boot.

Yet she couldn't turn away.

There is a time to kill, and a time to let fate follow upon its own course... and then there is a time to preserve.

Pursing her lips, she re-sent her hail, then proceeded to engage a scan of the ship. Sure as shootin, there was some sort of lifeform within.

Why is he not responding? she wondered, hitting transmit yet another time.

Sensors show he's alive; maybe he's hurt. But who or what is he?

Turning to another portion of her control panel, she then proceeded to run a spec scan on the little pod. Her eyes narrowed to see it was an old Imperial one.

Now she was really in a quandary. The Impys had been good to her in the past; she didn't want to anger them. Would they know if she up and left this pod without offering any assistance?

But I am offering it assistance, she answered herself.

It's not my problem if they don't respond.

She knew the Impys, though. They certainly didn't see things in the same logical manner that the vast majority of the universe did.

The answer popped to her then, one she didn't like, but one she knew she'd have to obey. Sighing then, she moved a hand to another, newly installed panel. There the controls to her new -- if not very powerful -- tractor beam gleamed like liquid silver.

At least it's only an escapepod; I can handle that one, she thought as she let the invisible lines of magnetic force reach out and snag the ominously quiet pod.

I'll tow this somewhere where there is someone else who can deal with it; there are enough peeps hanging in Onderon space, after all....

Satisfied with her resolution, she was reaching for the control that would inform Forbiddance it was now free to continue on its merry way, when another sensor flashed an amber warning. Her hand froze as stiff as the strange essence the sensors were now telling her to be floating in space mere hundreds of kilometers from her current position.

Startled, she sent out yet another scan, and with growing impatience waited for the data to come trickling in.

Cometary fragments, whew.

She nodded to herself, relaxing a fraction. All she would have needed at this point would have been another mystery to delay her from her task.

Try as you might, you can hail the willing but a response.. even acknoledgement.. from a failing escape pod was quite the impossible.

Loban himself was curious how he was relayed the message, as which would require some form of Comm System to be performing it's job.. where nothing inside the vessel was.

Humiods, especially homosapiens for that matter, all rely on their emotions and experiences with those emotions. Loban is now to who he was as a computer is to being reformatted.. learning everything over, less the basic internal instincts it needs to survive and adapt.

This was a confusing time, yet the least confused Loban had been in much time.. as he had no choice but to embrace afore mentioned instincts, and figure things out about his past when time was available..

Good, she thought to herself as she straightened in her seat.

It's about time for reversion--

It was as if Forbiddance had read her mind. Mere seconds later, and the ship gave a subliminal jerk; the starsmears outside the portals immediately resolved back into tiny and fiercely brilliant motes of light as real space popped back into existence around her.

There, that was painless enough, she mused as she now directed her ship toward a discenable disk glowing several million kilometers ahead.

Hello, beautiful....

Smiling as Forbiddance assured her that they were now heading directly toward Onderon, where an orbit would automatically be implemented, she then directed her focus elsewhere.

I wonder if my buddy back there survived the trip?

This was a real concern for her; she had never towed anything through hyperspace before, and indeed hadn't a real clue as to whether or not it was even physically possible.

I guess I slept through that day of class.

Another smile began curling across her features, then faded as the image of the escapepod popped onto her aft screens.

It looked strangely... fuzzy somehow.

She frowned.

What the-- What happened?

Real concern in her thoughts, she flipped open communication once again.

"Unidentified escapepod, this is Heaven's Forbiddance. I read... something obscuring your hull; scanners are having trouble indentifying it.

"Do you copy, escapepod?"

Sitting back and hoping for some kind of reply, she mulled over where she should go from here.

Obviously it would not be anything close to ethical to just dump this at Onderon now, she thought, utterly dismissing the incongruity of the term "ethical" being alluded to in the same sentence as herself. For when, indeed, were spies ethical in any way, shape or form?

But what to do with the blasted thing. What if there is really someone inside; they might be unconscious or dead, or it might be a simple power problem, maybe their communications is out--?

Pursing her lips in determination, she ran another scan of the escapepod. Results showed it to be as powerless as a womprat held in the claws of a sandcat.

Oh, hell, she thought, now reaching out to her controls.

I can't stay here forever, I gotta get to Dxun!

"Escapepod, this is Forbiddance. If you read, I am releasing you from my tractor; I will send emergency transmissions for your assistance, Heaven's Forbiddance, out."

With that she snipped off the tractor, and sent a heavily encrypted transmission back to the only place she could really think of.

It wouldn't do me very much good to announce myself to the natives now, would it?

"Hornett, this is Heaven's Forbiddance. I have encountered an escapepod, not far from your position; I have taken it with me to my first destination.

"It refuses to respond to hails, and there seems to be a weird coating on it. So if you respond to this, and come for it, please be careful.

"I don't know where the hell it came from to begin with-- but I am squirting coordinates to you.

"Heaven's Forbiddance, out."

Nodding to herself that she had done all she could about the situation, she continued on her way to the mystery-shrouded moon of Dxun.

Forbiddance this is Hornett. Your message has been recieved, and will be acted upon shortly. I will send a crew out to check on and retreive it, but your warning is also noted and will be taken into utmost consideration.

Good, she thought to herself as she closed the connection.

The closer they are to me, the better I'll like it. I'm not a bounty hunter, after all; having a Big Brother in one's back pocket can, at times, be a good thing...!

Now she grasped the controls, taking them to manual as the disk of Onderon grew in her screens. Soon it was joined by other smaller ones; one that was particularly dark and green and ominous looking seemed to beckon to her like a black jewel in the night.

Dxun.

As the Hornett reverted to realspace in Onderon territory, Commander Taylor Garrison, who was now on the main command deck, turned to Shawn Petrolu.

"Do you sense him?" he question the Jedi, then fell silent.

The Jedi stood in quiet introspection for a moment, then nodded. And this was all the cue that Taylor Garrison needed. Raising his wristcomm to his lips, he called for engineering. "Release the charged escape pod, and then focus our tractor beam on the escape pod 10 degrees from us. Precision is the key to this, the electricity from the tractor beam should knock Kesh off the Pod he is currently on and cause him to cling to the charged escape pod via statics electricity."

"We're on it sir," came the crisp reply from engineering. In moments the charged pod had been released, and the tractor beam, which had been warming in their final stages of reversion from hyperspace, was activated. As predicted, the strange coating on Loban Kenobi's escape pod flew off, immediately flying and clinging to the charged pod. Thus it was that Kenobi's pod was safely tractored into the main hanger bay of the Hornett while Nefrai Kesh found himself statically clinging to the outer hull of the empty escape pod.

Taylor Garrison waited for the crewmen in the hanger bay to confirm the berthing of Kenobi's escape pod.

"Sir," his comm finally crackled, "We have it."

"Very good."

Closing the comm connection at that, Taylor looked to Petrolu, the question readable in his eyes. "Kesh is still out there, and not on the Hornett," Shawn confirmed.

Taylor nodded, then rose his wristcomm to his lips once more. "Engineering, have you calculated a jump?"

"Yes sir."

"Hyperspace jump on my mark. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, mark."

No sooner had the words been spoken did the Hornett glide smoothly into hyperspace once more, leaving behind an empty escape pod with a strange and somewhat fuzzy looking outer coating...

(((OCC: Follow Taylor and all on the Hornett to On a Wing and a Prayer in this same forum, thank you.)))

He slowly, agonisingly slowly, began to reach for the pod hatch, and after a few minutes, reached it, and opened it. He pulled himself in, and slowly shut it. The minutes ticked by, and he began to feel himself become normal. He attempted to amuse himself by watching the readouts on the pod sensors, but soon lost interest.

Now, all he could do is wait. And wait he would. However, the system computer suddenly bleeped, and he felt the pod move. Suddenly, its engines ignited, and was rocketing for some planet or moon that he could not identify.

I will find a way out of my prison, and I will seek vengeance in any way I can.

She frowned to herself, watching as yet two more of the lifeform indicators merged, a pair of glowing blue dots which before her eyes resolved into one. After a moment that dot moved away from its position and off her screen; she shifted in her seat, almost hearing the sounds of crashing and roaring and tearing as one of the moon's inhabitants took its prey and disappeared with it.

After a bit she huffed a breath of air, puffing out her cheeks, and leaned forward. The sensor readout screen darkened in reply, as did the look in her eyes.

Ok, Minna; you knew there were beasties here. There's been enough rumors of this system to keep Jabba himself happy for at least an hour or two...

All you have to do, ol' girl, is make your way through them and that infernal jungle out there, find anything leftover of Mandalorian descent -- it's gotta be here, it's just GOTTA! -- and go from there.

There was a war here, years ago. Bodies will decay... Mandalorian equipment does not. Those Mandalorians were well provided with, that's what you've heard, right? Everything from needler darts to rocket packs to impervious armor to a full-scale first aid pack.

They traveled fast and far, and would undoubtedly have a broad-spectrum antibiotic or vaccine on them, wouldn't they? I mean, as far as logic goes, wouldn't these guys carry the antidote to the poison they used against others, on the slim chance that someone might get their hands on their handiwork and try to use it against them? Well, wouldn't they? You'd think that would be a part of the armament their warriors carried, wouldn't you?

And okay, so time has passed. Materials of organic origin does fall apart over time but if so, even if the stuff has degraded as probability would predict, wouldn't modern med-techs be able to use what you little remnants you find and bring them, extrapolate backward, and recreate the antidote? Assuming they had an antidote....

This is where the trail has led you. Now is the time to tread upon it.

She nodded in partial agreement with herself, but mostly to bolster her suddenly fading courage. The plan seemed so hale and whole when she had first thought of it, safe within the confines of her ship and lightyears away from this rumor-beset blight upon the universe. But now--

She shook away a rising ripple of fear and went to find what weaponry she might have aboard. Then, armed with a simple blaster, a net-gun, a vibro-blade, med-kit and handheld scanner, and wearing a face-obscuring visored helmet of her own, she proceeded to depart from her ship.

The hatch made a solid and not very reassuring whish as it closed behind her. She stood at the base of the gangway, scanning about her. Everywhere, solid blue blips, some colliding, some in seeming pursuit of each other.

She raised her head and stared at the trees ringing the little clearing she had found. Those trees waved their branches, seeming to greet her and invite her to come in to the shelter they provided.

She snapped her scanner closed and belted it. Then, blaster in hand, she entered into the jungle of Dxun, hunting for the remnants of one of the galaxy's most terrifying occupants, in the hopes of coming through with her end of the bargain she had struck with Eagle Enterprises.

The pod smashed through the atmosphere, a loud whistling sound comming as it plummeted, leaving a black smoke trail as it scorched its way through the sky.

Suddenly, the pod was silent for a moment, then it smashed through the toplayer of trees, to impact. Hard.

Kesh was thrown inside the pod, and smashed into the navigation controls, crushing them into uselessness as his claws raked across the various screens.

He lay there for a few minutes, recovering after the pod halted, half buried in the soft soil of the planet. He finally got up, and ripped open the hatch. Acursed craft, it is useless. He got out, and looked around that the place he had landed.

He raised his head, and let out a ear shattering, soul rending bay of agony, as he realized that of all the pathetic places he could have landed, he'd landed on one he had almost no chance of escaping.

Feeding time at the zoo, she thought to herself as she plastered herself against the rough bark of a towering tree, holding her breath and remaining as still as stone while she perused the readouts on her scanner.

More and more blue blips danced a minuet upon it, colliding and separating like errant electrons caught within a cloud of probability.

And it's probably time to get going now; hiding here isn't getting me any closer to finding what I need and getting the hell out of here.

She heaved a sigh geared toward bolstering her fluttering courage.

Dammit Minna, what were you thinking? Landing so close to the terminator, how stupid--

A twig snapped, somewhere nearby.

She froze, instantly becoming one with the jungle, a tiny shadow standing, ninja-like, amongst the growth of others.

Long moments passed. Nothing happened.

She let out her breath softly and continued onward, making certain that her footfall was as light as a flutterby's breath.

That light tread did her no good, however, when it came down on what appeared to be normal duff-strewn ground but in fact was the edge of an ancient and now heavily vegetated crater, one of the many remnants of the war that had occurred here untold years ago.

She let out a reflexive yip and rolled down the walls of the crater, coming to a halt against a green sapling now growing where the slope flattened out. For a moment she just sat there, shaking her head and getting her bearings back, then got to her feet.

A stab of pain raced from her ankle to her brain, shouting for all it was worth.

Oh great, that's just peachy!

Sitting down again, she quickly removed her boot and stared at her foot. The ankle was a cheery red, swelling even as she looked. Holding her breath, she ventured to carefully wiggle her toes, and when they responded, her foot as well.

It obeyed her, but not without yelling in protest.

Ok, so it's not broken, that's good. Probably wrenched.

Nodding in relief, she went to her med-kit and produced some support clings. This she wrapped about her ankle and the arch of her foot, until the unit was stabilized. It only whimpered in affrontery when she clambered once more to her feet, and then settled down to a steady grumble.

I can walk, thank the gods. Just not very fast, dammit. Oh well, you're a spy, aren't you? Spies move best slowly, right?

Right. Yeah, right.

Sighing a bit and berating herself for her clumsiness, she tied the boot to her belt. Then she maneuvered carefully from the crater -- no mean feat, that -- and continued on her way through the by now nearly completely dark jungle.

He continued moving along the direction he had held. He moved, then realized that the ground he stood on was not stable, as it gave away, sending him sliding down the large bowl of some form of crater. He clawed at the dirt as he continued sliding, the brush whiping at him as he passed. He gave up on using his normal form, and began to revert to his bipedal state, with extreme difficulty as he bumped his way down.

He finally managed to complete his shift, and as he neared a small tree, he wrapped his claws around its narrow trunk, spinning him 360 degrees around it. He came to a stop, and looked around. He realized he had slid roughly a few hundred feet down the crater, and looked up at his torn path down the side.

He took a large sniff at the surrounding air, and was suprised to scent... Ion trail? But what could cause it? He listened for the whine of an engine, or sound of a speeder, but was rewarded with a different sound.

Roughly a few dozen meters away, he could hear something moving clumsily for a predatorial standard, through the brush. It was moving slowly, in a pathetic attempt at stealth. Could they possibly be mappers? But they would go in larger force than one single person would they not?

Some spy you are, Minna! she grumbled to herself as she moved along, trying to remain as quiet as she possibly could and knowing full well that she was falling far below her normal standards in that department.

You might as well just hang up your credentials and call it quits after this, if you manage at all to get off of this hell-forsaken greenhouse!

She continued in this manner for a bit, and then paused to take a short rest. Her ankle, while indeed not broken, was very much sprained, and the stress of forced movement was taking more out of her than she originally thought it would.

I'm gonna find a leftover Mandalorian if it kills me, and then I'm history. I'm taking the credits and retiring to that nice little planet out in the Outer Rim, where people can still buy land for a song and can live out a quiet life alone if they want--

A sudden noise cut off her thoughts in mid word: somewhere, another twig snapped.

Catching her lip in order to slow down her tortured breathing -- yes, it was beginning to really hurt like hell to keep moving as she was! -- she snapped open her scanner and cast it about herself.

Strangely enough, there were no blue blips anywhere around.

Anywhere.

The hairs on the back of her neck rose up at this discrepency. Quickly replacing the scanner with the vibro-blade, blaster clenched tight and ready in the other, she crouched and peered about herself.

Nothing but jungle... one strangely silent and suddenly bereft of living things.

"Is- is there anybody there?" she called out in a low whisper, feeling only slightly ridiculous for doing so.

For inexplicably she simply knew she was being stalked... by some..thing.

Unfortunately, she was in no position to flee, not with her ankle as it was; cursing inwardly yet again for placing herself in this predicament, she shrank further back against the tree.

She clutched her weapons like twin lifelines, her knuckles white, rough bark raking her back.

Now, what was wrong with this picture?

Minna pressed herself harder against the tree she had backed up to, feeling even more vulnerable than she did before. She increased her hold upon her weapons to a point that the only reason the grips of the vibro-blade and blaster didn't shatter was simply due to the fact that their innate strengths were far greater than that provided by her relatively weak muscles. There seemed to be something about this stranger, some weird aura he seemed to exude, which whispered mockingly to her that she might just as well put them down, they wouldn't do her a lick of good, he could be on top of her and casually slitting her throat before she could begin to think of applying pressure to the trigger....

She gulped, fighting a losing battle with panic.

"Wh- wha' makes you think I need any help?" she said in a dry whisper, knowing even as she spoke how obviously ridiculous that statement was. If only because of the obvious state of her ankle; trying to pretend all was right with her little world she made the attempt to stand fully upright upon it, and nearly fell to the forest floor for her efforts.

Said wits which she now struggled to keep about her.

"What guarantee do I have that you will not harm me?" she finally asked, letting her voice strengthen a bit in timbre and leaning to relieve her injured ankle of the weight she had just tried to put upon it.

So strange it was that he had happened upon her like this... but then, for all she knew he lived here, or had been abandoned here, and she just happened to have landed in the vicinity that he called home.

Or maybe it was something else entirely.

She was opening her mouth to reply, when another thought struck her, lightning hard.

That weirdness on the escapepod that she had tractored here... the incorporeality of it... and now, here is this stranger, whose form flowed into solidity right in front of her very eyes....

Her heart tripled in pace and she drew in an involuntary breath of fear. But struggling against that fear was the fact that this thing, this "Nefrai Kesh" as he called himself, could have easily struck her down at any given moment.

An odd little niggle rose up in the dark corners of her mind to suggest that her weapons would be useless against him, even if she could manage to actually wield them against him.

She blinked, and finally managed to blurt out the unthinkable.

"Are you that... the thing that covered an escapepod of my recent acquaintance?"

She didn't trust him one whit... and she couldn't run even if she tried. Her eyes flicked a moment to her obviously swollen ankle, then traced back up to stare directly into the empty sockets of the skullface of Nefrai Kesh.

I'm still alive.

That observation popped up from nowhere, as if once she truly realized her vulnerability before this murderous thing -- what was that he had spoken of, rending truly horrible destruction but now suddenly had no desire to kill any longer, did not want to be considered a mindless killing machine? -- it was then free to remind her that perhaps she was not as vulnerable as she thought.

I'd be dead now if that was the case. He could easily have squashed me like a bug, many times over, and then simply gone on and found Heaven's Forbiddance on his own, and left my body here to rot....

But he hadn't.

Obviously possessing the ability to merge into shadow, he had chosen instead to make himself known to her, to plea with her, and to try to assuage her panic and fear. Maybe he really was more than his appearance suggested after all.

Even if he did look like Death on the March.

She drew in a shaky breath, and then drew herself upright as steadily as she could.

"I'm here hunting for an antidote to a toxin, one which I feel can only be found on this moon.

"Help me to find this toxin, and then get back to my ship safely, and-- and--"

She paused again, staring into those seemingly depthless eye sockets. Something seemed to shimmer far in the back of them; she shuddered and then continued.

"And then I'll-- I'll think about granting your ummm...

It throbbed and ached like blazes, too.

Grimacing a bit, she returned her gaze to those terrible eye sockets, hoping that he didn't mistake that grimace as being directed toward him.

Well... too late now, Minna ol' gal, she told herself.

You might as well leap in all the way now.

"I'm looking for the antidote to the Mandalorian Temblor toxin. An acquaint-- that is, a client has hired me to find it for him.

"It seems someone has been stricken with this poison; strange, since it's really not been around for thousands of years... Anyway, I knew it had to originate upon this moon. I figured if the old Mandalorians created the poison to begin with, they would have to have an antidote as well, and would more than likely have their warriors armed with it, too.

"That's why I'm here."

She stopped with that, looking down to her ankle once again. Embarrassment welled up inside of her, for she was not usually this chatty, and had no idea why she had opened up to this awful stranger as she had.

Maybe to keep on his good side...?

He crouched and reached out, then paused. "Do not fear." He took the angle gingerly, cursing the sharpness of his clawed hands. "I can do little, but my own regenerative powers..."

He closed his eyes in a spiritual way, for the mask obviously could do no such thing, and concentrated. Slowly, some of the bone-like flesh from his own body faded into the dark immaterial mist his was composed of, and drifted to his hand.

Upright, hale and whole, able to run....

She wiggled her ankle, checking it out; yessir, it was indeed back to how it should be, nicely healed by this... thing.

Her eyes flew back up to Nefrai's skullface and for a long moment she studied him. Every lick of fear within her had subsided, replaced now by wonder and growing curiosity.

He could have killed me... look what he just did to fix my ankle. He could have, he easily could have.

The words rang like a mantra in her mind, unable to be released. No further logic rose to initiate life-saving procedures; within her very being, Minna had the green light to go.

To go... along with him? Er- rather, to let him go with her.

"Th- thank you," she murmured, still staring into his sockets. She wiggled her foot once more, set it down gingerly, placed her weight upon it... it still held.

That step brought her even closer to his terrifying physicality. She stopped, practically butted up against his torso, and stared up into that skull.

She considered them a moment, then thought back on all this creature--

No. This being.

--had said to her during their brief and so fateful encounter. Something in particular caught her memory; she zeroed in on it lika a stooping hawk on a mouse.

A jedi had felt he was not a mindless killing machine. Now he does not know what he is to become.

He. Yes, that's a real gender there, not an "it," but a he.

She cocked her head to one side and finally spoke up.

"Well, maybe we can help each other, then," she said quietly. "You help me find the antidote I need, and maybe I can help you find out who you really are."

Or at least guide you into finding who you really are meant to be. And in the meantime, it would be nice having this hulking "monster" as a comrade; it just might come in handy one day.

"All right?"

She let her hand drop, but didn't move from where she was standing so close in front of him.

He turned and looked about. "We should leave this place, I do not know why, but the predators do seem to avoid me in this place. However, I do not know if this if merely my fortune."

"I don't know," she finally admitted, letting her shoulders rebound in the other direction and droop with the realization that indeed, she really hadn't the foggiest clue as to what she was looking for.

"I just know that the Temblor toxin was created by the Mandalorians, and they hid out here, and had their final battle with the jedi here long, long ago. I was going on a-- well..."

She paused for an uncomfortable moment.

"Well, on the assumption that if they had this toxin, they'd likewise have an antidote, and probably on their person. If we could find a warrior's remains that looks complete... I mean, no empty pockets or carrying pouches or anything...

"I-- other than that, I don't know what to do. I guess I somehow thought it would just, well-- be here... somehow."

She hung her head.

Dammit, but 40,000 credits was an awful lot of money.

Her mental image of her ship's complete re-fit seemed fainter and fainter by the moment, and she sighed.

Something he said struck her then and she blinked, turning her head to look up at him as they made their way through the dark and ominously silent jungle.

Minna didn't say anything else, but she couldn't help but frown at what Nefrai had called her. She didn't feel like a huntress, never had in all of the time she had spent skulking hither and yon through the spacelanes collecting information for one client or another. The term "huntress" implied a person being more than a touch aggressive, and aggression just wasn't in her character profile.

I know it's in his, though....

She cut a sidelong glance up at the skullface, which in turn hid--

Who-- or what?

She shook her head. Maybe one day her newfound companion would reveal himself to her, maybe not. Until then, she would simply take him for what he chose to be in her presence, and hope to all the wide, wide universe that he wasn't going to change on her and go dark and evil and all ballistic.

Something loomed on the ground up ahead, and she pointed to it.

"There," she said, increasing her pace a little.

"That looks like armor; let's go see if there's anything looking like an antidote vial or something... and heck, whule we're at it, we just might see if any of that armor would be useful in itself."

Like, for me.

A mental image of herself clad in Mandalorian armor tumbled immediately on the heels of that thought; she smiled a bit, and merely quickened her pace.

And strangely touched with power, too.

Gulping a little, she took it off, and thus did not see Nefrai's furtive placement of the datapad under his cloak.

"Not really," she said offhandedly, casting about like a hunting nek. "At least, I haven't found anything that looks remotely like any antidote."

She paused, the helmet in her hands, unwilling to let it go. She wished it fit; maybe somewhere they might find a smaller warrior, whose armor would match her slender body more closely.

He glanced at his cloak where the datapad lay tucked away, and thought back to the image. The scene had been laid out from the eyes of the mandalorian he had found the pad on.

The mandalorians had moved through the brush stealthily, their target was a few kilometers away, but it didn't matter. They had halted, a quick break being taken as they had stopped. One of them commented on the stillness. They raised weaponry as a rustle was heard in the brush, suddenly comming from all sides.

Suddenly a shriek came through their comlinks as a dark figure had leapt out from a tree, rending through the mans helmet, tossing him aside. It by the time they had pulled their triggers, two more had been slain. In the end, they had all fallen, and the datapad had been damaged.

Minna frowned a little, realizing that jungle inhabitant aren't usually cautious to such a degree.

Especially on such a moon as this, uninhabited as it was for many, many years.

Gradually it came to her attention that the various and sundry creatures of Dxun weren't the only silent ones; slowing a bit to shine her hand-light about she realized that her companion was silent as well, seeming to radiate an aura about himself that could only be considered to be...

Pensive.

She cast a look his way, shining her light not so that it struck his masked face, but hit him lower upon his body, sending a backwash of light upon the terrifying features of that skullmask. Shadows sprang into being there, underscoring his silence and turning it from being pensive into something utterly ominous.

She gulped, momentarily frightened.

"Umm..." she began, beating down that flash of hopefully unreasonable fear. "You seem quiet.

He quickly cast about for something to change the subject. "So, you are looking for some of the armor these warriors wore?" He went to another one, and quickly roled it over under the pretext of searching it, quickly hiding the claw marks upon the breastplate that had punctured the armor.

At his feet was the disarticulated remains of a full set of the armor of Mandalore; furthermore, it appeared to belong to a warrior something on the vertically challenged side.

She drew in a quick breath and let the helmet she held drop to the grass at her feet. Then she reached out a trembling hand.

"It's beautiful," she whispered, pausing and turning to look at Nefrai.

He could physically stop her, that was easy, but to do so would harm her. He could tell her of the damage, but she could easily put two and two together.

He was left of the option of lying to her, and telling her it was not going to work. But that was an easily seen through lie as well. "I...."

She gulped a little, and slowly withdrew her hand. A sense of discomfort wafted about them; somewhere, the deathly stillness was broken as something rustled, breaking a branch as it moved through the dense cover of the jungle floor.

"All right," she said simply, then took a step away from the remains of the Mandalorian.

"Let's look this way some more; hey, you said you might be able to remove the toxin from my client if we can't find an antidote.

"Is that really true?"

He searched through another madalorians armor as he spoke. "What I did for you was the first time, I can make no guarentee. I would suggest we find the antidote over a hope of my abilities."

He continued his search, wondering how long he could keep up the act of hiding the markings. If she came upon even a single mandalorian suit with his markings, she would know in a heartbeat he had lied.

He turned another one, and began searching through a medkit on the mandalorians side. Aged synthflesh, bacta pads, all useless poultices to injury. Wait....

She reached out a hesitant hand and took it from him, and held it close to her face in careful scrutiny.

"I don't know," she finally murmured, now holding it up to the faint rays of moonlight that managed to break through the dense canopy above their heads. The tiny object glittered, the fluid within it shimmering and viscous, having the consistency of runny cement.

"It could be; I really have no way of telling. I don't have an actual sample of the toxin, but I do have this."

She reached into her own pouch and pulled out a small vial. It shone a deep, rich and ruby red; cocking her head a bit to one side, she looked up at Nefrai again.

"This is a sample of my client's blood; it has the toxin in it. Maybe there is some way we can test this, do you think?"

Turning back to the vial she held, her gaze inadvertantly fell to the pile of armor at Nefrai's feet. Her eyes widened when she saw the gashes upon it; she knelt down quickly and touched one of the gaping rents with one finger.

"Great Mother of All, what in all the universe could have caused this?" she asked, her jaw dropping.

He fell away with his voice, and ceased, hiding his arms under his cloak slightly, hiding the claws. "We could try to analyze it back at your ship, unless you have some form of equipment to test it." He said, looking into the bloodred vial.

"I don't know; that's what I asked you," she said, then sighed. Closing her eyes, she made a quick mental countdown.

"Time is running out, my friend," she finally said, opening her eyes to look at Nefrai's terrifying visage.

"I think we're just going to have to take what we have and run with it; if it works, ir works; if it doesn't, it doesn't. Chances are this could be something promising, though; we sure didn't run across it on any other body."

She nodded, indicating that they should go but paused a final time. A look of longing came into her eyes, and she waved to the armor at their feet.

"Let's take this with us anyway," she said, stooping to pick up the helmet. As far as she was concerned, possession of a suit of Mandalorian armor would go a long way toward compensating her if the object they carried proved not to be the antidote.

If it doesn't fit me, maybe I can sell it; I bet it's worth forty thou, too....

Asking Nefrai to gather up the remainder, she then set off to where she had left her ship.

"She's a modified light assault cruiser," she said, a note of pride creeping into her voice as she bent down to avoid a particularly low overhang of seemingly pure thorns. "I've got her -- ugh."

The grunt was reflexive as a thorn reached out and tangled itself in her ear.

"Ow, ow, ow!"

Hunched over so as not to get too close to the thornbush's fellows, who seemed to have nothing but ambush on their minds, she poked gingerly at her ear. The thorn merely imbedded itself deeper, pulled there by tiny contractions of her muscles as they writhed with pain.

"Dammit!"

Shaking her head, she plopped the helmet on to protect her against any further attack. Then she went on, although in a somewhat more terse tone of voice.

"I've got her modified; she's got great armor and can turn on a credit and hand you the change. I could use a touch we more in the munitions department; that's what I'm hoping to buy with what I get for that antidote.

"If it's the antidote, that is."

She let some time pass in silence, struggling to see her way through the dark jungle, her vision narrowed by the T-visor of the helmet on her head. A stumble at one point sent her chin striking against a toggle; immediately the inside of the visor lit up in green night vision.

"Cool," she breathed, pausing to take a look around. Everything was suddenly very familiar; noting a comforting shape in the shadows ahead, she hurried on.

"I look forwards to seeing it, if you feel uncomfortable with my presence, I would stay in the hold."

"I've seen worse," she commented lightly as, taking off the helmet she proceeded to enter her ship. Once aboard she plopped the helmet onto the nearest seat and hurried to her controls; they glittered and blinked, patiently awaiting her reappearance.

A massive noise told her Nefrai was aboard. She played with the controls, and the gangway slid up, becoming invisible in the bulkhead while the hatch sealed behind it.

She nodded to herself then, and took a seat, taking care to strap herself in tightly.

"And so we left the ruins of the felled Mandalorians." He looked down at her.

After all, in three days we'll be back; it wouldn't hurt to tell him a little bit.

She cleared her throat.

"I don't know who it was for, but a man by the name of Taylor Garrison aboard a ship named the Hornett put out an apb for anyone to bring him the antidote to the Mandalorian Temblor toxin. From what I understand, those afflicted don't have much more than a few weeks until they die; we need to be back to rendezvous with my client in..."

She cast a look to the nearest chrono.

"Holy cats, in less than three days! We'd better sky!"

He went down the hallways, searching without true purpose, and finally found a small empty room.

He opened it, and entered, closing it behind him. He crouched down in the darkness, and put his back to the cold durasteel wall, his thoughts seeming to come alive again.

He set down the small datapad recording device, and watched himself, not really seeing the image, decimate the Mandalorians again and again.

Minna spent the majority of those days glued to her seat, content to watch the translation of hyperspace as given to her by her forward screens. To actually view the reality of that dimensionless superrealm would have been to invite insanity; as it was, the chromatic smears of the quickly moving stars was enough to give her a headache.

But she put up with that, keeping most of it at bay with daydreams of what she would do with her reward... if she received it, that is.

I hope that we got the antidote, she thought to herself, shifting in her seat to get more comfortable.

If not, I hope Nefrai can do his weird lil ol thang, and fix up my client good as new....

She cut off her musings at that thought, smiling.

I called him by his name.

She didn't know which filled her with a greater sensation of warmth and well-being, the fact that she could indeed now refer to Nefrai Kesh as a being and not a thing, or just the simple fact that he seemed content enough to hang about with her as her companion.

Well, that remains to be seen....

Frowning a little, she grunted, and shoved that impertinent thought deeper away into her mind. There it niggled and wiggled, worrying her at a level she wasn't aware of, really, but there nevertheless.

A blinking sigil caught her eye, and she jerked into wakefulness. Her hands flashed out to play on her communications panel,
both inter- and extra-ship.

"We're coming out of hyperspace!" she called to Nefrai, then bent over the comm-mike.

"Hornett, this is Heaven's Forbiddance," she called out even as the hulking bulk of that mighty super star destroyer burst into view above them.

"Requesting permission to dock, and docking coordinates. I'd appreciate if if you'd tell Mr. Garrison I've arrived...

"With my companion."