Who: Galen and OPEN. Someone please recover the loose Jedi. What: Arriving at the dimensional busstop currently occupied by hell on earth. When: Let’s go with night, just to make it even more creepy! Where: A ruined city. Which ruined city? Take your pick! Rating: Let’s go with PG for now. Status: Incomplete.
The sensation of coming out of hyperdrive wasn’t all that unusual for Galen. His missions had taken him across the galaxy more than once, and you didn’t get around that much without hyperdrive. The difference this time was that the sensation wasn’t there, but he was still out of hyperdrive. Out of space, too. He was on high alert before his feet even touched the ground, drawing his sabers from his sides with the force and igniting them. The sabers, one green and one red, came alive with the usual snap-hiss. When he did touch down on the ground, Galen took a moment to survey his surroundings with his regular senses. It looked like a primitive city, though it was clearly in ruins. Certainly not something he should have been seeing when literally a single blink ago, he was on the Rogue Shadow with Juno, ferrying a likely angered Sith Lord to the rebel base for interrogation. Which brought up an even more important point: JUNO WAS ALONE WITH VADER. The thought sent a knife of panic straight into his heart, and Galen had to take a second to bring the calm he’d slowly been working on reacquiring since his rebirth – if that was what it was – back into place. Getting back to Juno was of the utmost importance, it was true, but there was no way he’d do that if he gave in to panic. He still felt it gnawing at his nerves, but had at least found some surface calm. It was what he needed now, at least. Having detected all he could detect with his normal five senses, Galen next reached out with his Force senses, intending to stretch them out as far as he could.
Before he could get anywhere even near his limit, he was hit by a sudden, overpowering wave of nausea that doubled him over while everything in his stomach, and it felt like his stomach itself, tried to force its way up out of his mouth. He cut off his mental scan as suddenly as it had started and allowed himself a few moments doubled over to breath deep, trying to get the feeling of horrible sickness out of his mind. He may have also been swearing up a storm in Huttese, one of his favored languages for swearing. “What was that?” Something was very wrong here. He’d never felt something so wrong in the Force before. This was different than the Dark Side, so different that Galen couldn’t even compare them. Even after he’d forced back the nausea, he was left with a horrible sick feeling that he couldn’t quite shake. “By the Light, what is wrong with this place?”
He knew he’d have to reach out with his senses again. He didn’t want to, but after something like that, he had to investigate further. Something was clearly horribly wrong with this planet, and before he could move on or take any course of action, he needed to know more about it. That didn’t mean he liked it. He took a deep breath to steady his nerves and to try and push back a little more of that sick feeling, focused on that calm feeling, and once again stretched out with his senses. Just like before that horrible feeling of sickness crashed into him from all sides, but he strengthened his resolve and fought to work past it. It was hard, and Galen wasn’t sure how long he could keep it up for, but he did manage to get passed the feeling enough to feel something else. Something…for lack of a better term, something evil, evil in an entirely different way than the Dark Side but no less powerful. This feeling permeated and corrupted everything around him. He cut off his senses again, deciding he knew enough now to formulate a decent hypothesis. This planet, wherever it was, was being ravaged by something horrible, something Galen had never felt before. He took another deep breath and reached out once more with his sense to confirm what he’d felt.
And twisted just in time to see a swarm of bodies, literally oozing with the sick feeling, come swarming out of an alley between two ruined buildings. There had to be at least thirty of them. They looked relatively human, but underneath the skin they felt like nothing beyond hopelessly sick, mindless things. He knew he wouldn’t be able to outrun them, not when they were less than twenty feet from him and closing rapidly, but he certainly didn’t want to be close to them, either. Still, he had a plan. Dropping his senses, he began focusing on an entirely other aspect of the Force. He wasn’t sure if this counted as Dark Side or not, and frankly, he didn’t care. These things weren’t alive, not really. He’d felt it for himself, and he wasn’t sure if he’d ever be able to get rid of that sick feeling. As they closed the distance he found the Rage and let it go, feeling the Force coursing through him, supercharging every nerve and synapse. He was forcing himself to reach a higher level of mastery than he was usually capable of by enhancing himself with the Force, and he didn’t have long. Luckily, he didn’t need long. This strategy worked on the swarming Terror Droids he’d fought on the Salvation, and these things behaved at least a little like them. It would work just as well.
He lifted off the ground, curling his knees up to his chest as a bubble of Force wrapped around him. The creatures swarmed, but they couldn’t breach the shield. The sick feeling they brought with them smashed against his awareness, but charged as he was, it couldn’t put even the tiniest dent in his focus. He gathered power, channeling every last ounce of energy he had into the bubble, and then with a loud scream sent it out in a wave all around him. It was the same Repulse attack he’d used before, but supercharged as he was, it hit levels of destructive power that Vader couldn’t even imagine. Instead of simply pushing them all back, the wave knocked them into the air and then disintegrated them. It took barely a few moments, and if you blinked you might have missed it. In one moment, thirty of these horrible creatures went from swarming masses of hostility and sickness to snowy ash. The attack over, Galen dropped back to the ground, landing in a crouch. On the plus side, the creatures were gone, and he couldn’t feel any more of them in his immediate vicinity. The down side? Any Force users, or others sensitive to power fluctuations, probably felt that. He’d also used up a good deal of his power for the attack. His focus was strained, and he wouldn’t be able to summon up enough for more than a few paltry tricks for a little bit. He didn’t need more right now, though. Instead he stretched his senses out about twenty yards in all directions, reignited his sabers, and began cautiously making his way through the city, hoping that he wouldn’t encounter any more of those things.