InsaneJournal

Something slightly askew...
Who: Galen (open)
What: Arrival
Where: Library/streets
When: Early evening
Rating: PG?
Status: Complete unless tagged



It would have been difficult to describe exactly how it felt. It wasn’t so much a describable sensation as it was an impression that something had changed, and so radically that his body could not understand the totality of the shift. All he knew, and all that words would provide him, was that something terrible and powerful and empty seized hold of him and pulled. Then he was gone. (She was gone.)

But he wasn’t gone, he was still there, but just not the ‘there’ he’d been occupying previously and he knew this gut-deep and without doubt because the hum of the Force in this place was alien and bizarre. It murmured around him, alive and powerful and comforting in the knowledge that even displaced as he knew the Force remained. He focused on that, used that as the anchor to orient himself before finally looking up to take in the world around him.

It was a library. Part of him protested this was impossible, but his senses didn’t lie. Galen quickly got up and stepped down from the platform he’d awoken on; perturbed by the certainty he had just appeared there rather than placed there. The vast building was empty of all life, utterly silent, eerie in its stillness. Galen’s senses were flung out all around him, straining for any sign he was not alone, but all was calm. Increasingly agitated by the bizarre circumstance he was finding himself in, Galen reached ponderously for one of the shelved books, tugging a red bound volume from its place and letting it fall open in his hand.

“Blank?” he murmured. “Why are they all –?”

And then a hand of metal descended on his shoulder and the book hit the floor.

Galen didn’t wait to figure out what grabbed him. His light saber leapt from its clip at his waist to his free hand, a blaze of solid dwarf star blue and he rammed it through the armor chest plating… to absolutely no effect. He was fighting what looked to be a suit of armor – droid of some kind?! – dead and silent and thoughtless as the metal it was made of, he hadn’t sensed a thing off it as it came up behind him.

He switched tactics; hit it with a bolt of bottle blue lightening. It crackled across its dim alloy plating, skittering away like it had never been. A knot of fear lanced through him and Galen hit the droid with enough telekinetic pressure to knock a wall down, lashing with the Force to zero effect. It ignored the attacks as one might ignore a slight temperature drop and Galen realized with some apprehension that he was probably in quite a lot of trouble.

“What are you?” he snapped at it. “What do you want? What’s your primary?”

The suit ignored him. From the corners of the room, more of them appeared. He felt that attacking one of them at this point might be a little pointless so he just accepted silently that there wasn’t anything he could do and waited for all this to play out. The machines took him by the arm and led him with surprising civility to the door. One opened the door, and the others led him to the front steps where they stood him like a misplaced child on the sidewalk and let him go. None said anything and he guessed information dispersal wasn’t part of their function class. The last droid handed him a small black handheld communication device, then turned about and clanked its way back inside.

Galen rolled the handheld in palm for a moment, examined the city around him, and decided something had gone terribly askew. He'd been taken. That much was clear. He'd been with Juno before, her face leaning over him in the snow, asking him something and now... He took a long breath. Then he tapped the nearest passing person on the shoulder.

“Hey,” he said. “Where am I?”