InsaneJournal

Who? Jaina, Allana, NPC!hobo, and NPC!demons
What? DEEmonic kidnapping.
Where? Complex lobby / town.
When? TONIGHT, but slightly earlier.
Rating? Probably not terrifying, but be warned for fighting / Force-violence / brief possession / kidnappery?

It would be good to get out of the apartment for a little while - it wasn’t that she didn’t want to be there, with Ani, because she did. Having him back was great, like things were going to stop being so bad... it was just dealing with the imminent explanations of why Jacen was acting like he was that she didn’t look forward to, and thinking about that - about how different things were, now - made her wonder just how different she felt, when her brothers felt her Force presence. When anyone did - what did they feel?

Anakin had died when both his siblings had still been themselves, had never been anything different before, just light all the way through. She knew what it was like, finding out that was no longer the case - Jacen, when she’d first arrived here, had felt so wrong; she wasn’t sure what it said about her that she was pretty much completely used to it, by now - and she didn’t want Ani to have to deal with any of that. Plus, what Jacen had done to Tahiri...

Yeah, she wasn’t looking forward to what would happen when the truth came out. Thankfully, Anakin was easy enough to distract and pacify, and not completely helpless in an apartment on his own in the complex where it was safe, so Jaina could head out to meet Allana for some coffee.

She was glad her niece (and it was still weird, thinking like that, especially when the girl wasn’t that much younger than she was) hadn’t been in town, over the last week or so. It was bad enough that Jacen had been there, and her mother... and Andrew who was supposed to see her as a role-model of some kind. She’d pretty much failed dramatically at that, lately.

Her despair was more embarrassing than she could remember anything else being for a long time, the kind of embarrassment that was bordering the thin line that kept it from being properly considered shame. She knew - and understood - that what had happened hadn’t been her fault.... in theory. But she’d let the seed be planted, she’d let it fester, hadn’t said anything, had basically done everything she knew she wasn’t supposed to do (all the things she’d seen some of the members of her squadron do, during the war, before they made some ‘mistake’ and gotten themselves killed).

As she reached the lobby where she was supposed to meet Allana, she did her best to shake it all off, wrap all the negative up and tamp down on it. She couldn’t hide herself in the Force the way Jacen did - he’d planned to teach her, but so far she hadn’t gotten it - but she didn’t need that extreme of a shield right now, anyway. But keeping her emotions out of the way, where Allana wouldn’t be drowning in them, would be a good thing.
---
Despite the probable grounding, the unrest caused by the seal’s latest foray into Solo collecting, and Jacen’s absence in the Force irritating her peace of mind like a loose tooth or a rock in her shoe- not painful, not really, since she was more used to him gone than present but strangely wrong nonetheless- Allana was in a good mood. Vegas had been exactly what she’d wanted it to be, a week and change of complete freedom—no lessons, even the mostly enjoyable ones with her aunt, no lectures, no family drama, just exploring and playing poker and dancing and, for pretty much the first time in her life, being completely free to do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted to, in a city where most other people were doing exactly the same. This meant that, at one point, she’d had to go on a half-day trek all over Las Vegas to look for a bookstore since she was, apparently, the only person in Vegas who put ‘reading’ under the heading of things she’d wanted to do, but it had been fun all the same and as she hurried down the stairs and rounded the corner to meet her aunt she was humming a song under her breath, one she’d heard playing at every club she’d visited.

“Hey!” she exclaimed, spotting Jaina across the lobby and hurrying over to give her a hug. “I hear Anakin broke the coffee maker already? So that means we clearly need to drink, like, eight million cups of coffee because you need to store some up for later right?” she tried to look completely earnest in her intent but laughed at the last moment anyway. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep it to under one million. You’re probably not in the mood to try to pry me off the ceiling after a complete Force and coffee meltdown. Though that new Starbucks drink? The one bigger than your stomach? I may actually have to try it. Especially since I now actually have enough money to buy something from Starbucks without having to go around looking at the ground for quarters to buy food later,” she went on, letting her chatter carry them through the door and out into the evening outside the complex where the streetlights were beginning to flicker on and a light snow was falling.

---
Fucking freezing, Rick curled his fingers up inside his gloves even though he hadn’t felt cold in his fingers, not really, since that winter in Detroit when he’d been put on that construction job, some stimulus thing doing wiring up on an overpass in January. He’d met a man there, Charlie his name might have been, who hadn’t even worn gloves except canvas ones when he was cutting wire. After awhile, might-have-been Charlie had told him, you didn’t feel the cold in your fingers, you toughened up. He had, eventually. Still, curling his fingers like that was a reflex even when the cold was mostly in his chest and tearing at his ribs, nestled dangerously against the flesh that had managed to stay soft. Better things to curl your fingers around though, he thought, remembering that Sheila’s, the liquor store where you could get whiskey cheaper than it had any right to be, was just around the corner.

Still, he stayed wedged between the corner of a protruding stoop and the apartment building it belonged to, hunched down into himself like he was a turtle trying to retract into a shell, waiting. The woman, the one with the eyes that made him think she was lost in some godawful trip no matter how collected, how eerily in control she seemed, had told him to wait. She’d promised him money, showed it to him, enough for food, for a coat, but more importantly for hours and hours of pure rot-gut oblivion. Rick had never been a patient man, had walked out on homes and jobs and women because something in him just couldn’t be still and had driven him on and on until he’d beaten it down with whiskey and abuse and learned to be very still in alleys and bus stop benches. The money that woman had showed him though, it was enough to make even him wait. ”This girl walks by here a lot,” she’d said, shown him a picture of a redhead that he looked at as clinically as a scientist, noticing that she was young, remembering that she’d dropped spare change in his cup a few times, but not particularly caring. ”She has two necklaces that we want. I’m guessing you don’t really care why. Grab them and run there,” she’d pointed to a doorway at the end of an alley. ”We’ll be ready. And you’ll be rewarded.” She’d shown him the money and she’d been right, he didn’t care why.

Still, it had been a long time, a week or so since the woman had visited him, and he’d come back here every day since then when he could have been at the shelter on Main, and he was cold. Then, from down the street he saw a flash of red hair under a streetlight and clambered to his feet, uncurling his fingers inside of his gloves. Finally. It’s fucking freezing.
---
Allana paused in her conversation with Jaina, wincing slightly and closing herself off a little to the presences around her as they passed the homeless man crouched next to a stoop. He was drunk, as usual, and she saw him clamber to his feet out of the corner of her eye and start down the sidewalk after them. He was always somewhere along her route to the diner and therefore so routine a sight, and unpleasant feeling in the Force, that she closed herself off to him out of self-preservation. There were only so many times you could stand to feel that much choked off, inebriated, alternating desperation and defeat when there was nothing you could do beyond dropping whatever spare change you had into a paper cup.

She’d turned back towards her aunt, opened her mouth to say something, when a spike of intent made her spin abruptly back again towards the man she’d been so determined to ignore. She raised her hands reflexively to block the blow she was expecting, that, if it had come, she would have been able to deal with, to subdue such a weak attacker, in a matter of moments. But the expected impact against her block never came, instead there was a quick pressure, a pain in the back of her neck as the clasps on the two necklaces she wore snapped against her skin, and then the man had taken off running with a speed she never would have suspected he possessed.

Her first mistake, she would think later, was that she stood there for a moment in bewildered shock, mind scrambling to process being attacked at all, then the unexpected robbery, and then, slowly, too slowly, because she had never really been threatened here before, had begun to get complacent about these demons everyone talked about, what it meant. Her second mistake was that, instead of heading straight for her aunt and borrowing one of her protective charms, she reflexively made a grab for her own and when she missed, too slow by a fraction of a second, she gave chase. Even then it might not have been too late, she was faster than she looked, than she’d have had any right to be without the Force, and as she rounded the corner of a nearby alleyway after the man she was already starting to gain on him.

A screeching of tires, however, heralded the sudden realization that however this ended it was already far past too late. The van that rounded the corner from where it had been parked a few blocks away brought the vague wrong feeling of demons that could be felt, by the Force sensitive, as a sort of pervasive influence threading through the city into startling, localized clarity. Allana skidded to a halt when she felt it, turned to run back towards Jaina, but the van slid between them, closing off the mouth of the alley with Jaina on the street and Allana, she realized with a sudden dawning of horror all the training in the galaxy couldn’t quash for a moment, trapped like a rat on the other side as open to possession as any unwitting civilian walking the streets. Behind her the door at the back of the alley slammed as the man who’d stolen her necklaces ran through it and a lock clicked audibly.

No, she thought as she drew her lightsaber and backed up, no, no, no. She’d felt demons before but never, aside from Ruby who was different somehow, this close and never with the thought in her mind that she might feel like that, of that pure, unadulterated sense of wrong filling up every crevice of her mind and Force presence until everything she was now became just an afterthought to something twisted. A man and a woman, eyes black, climbed out of the van on her side and she could sense even more emerging on the other to face her aunt.

“Hey there kid,” the woman said, sauntering forward with a grin, apparently unconcerned about the lightsaber. “Do you mind? My friend needs a ride.”

--

Later, if anyone asked what had happened, Jaina wouldn’t even be sure how to explain it, aside from the it happened too fast excuse that shouldn’t have even made sense, but somehow was the only way to say what had actually happened. She hated herself already for the lapse in attention, how distracted she’d let herself become, or whatever it was that had meant the man had gotten close enough to Allana to grab her necklaces and take off before Jaina even realized something was going on. And by that time, her niece was already running off after him, and Jaina really had no choice but to follow.

The van pulling up between them, cutting Allana off from her, made her stop short; senses catching on - and then recoiling from - the badwrongdark sense of demons, hand automatically drawing her lightsaber as two figures climbed out of the van on the side closest to her. Men, but they weren’t really, demons in their eyes, in their presences, and her other hand came out, palm-first with a blast of Force energy, pinning them to the side of the van.

“What do you want?” She pressed a little harder, let them feel it in their borrowed bones, letting her head cant to one side slightly and her expression shift to a smirk, confidence she didn’t really feel covering over the panic she was doing her best to mask - mostly for Allana’s sake, because she was sure the girl wasn’t used to her aunt being anything less than a great role-model, a fearless Jedi who would be able to handle anything, but here, now, that was so far from what Jaina was, and after the kind of week she’d had she was edging a few steps too close to the breaking point already.

“You,” is the demon’s reply, a taunting, sing-song tone coming from a man in a stuffy business suit, and she presses harder, makes him wince and shift uncomfortably, despite the spreading smile on his face, “Oh... I think you broke his rib. He’s gonna feel that in the morning...”

---
Allana could hear Jaina from the other side of the van and she concentrated on her aunt and teacher’s presence as she steadied her hands on her lightsaber and lifted her chin to look the demon who’d spoken to her in the eye. We’re Jedi. Aunt Jaina’s survived wars, she’s killed Vong, she’ll make them wish they’d never so much as looked at us. “Tell your friend to buy a car then,” she shot back. It wasn’t the cleverest retort in the history of battle repartee but her voice and her hands on her lightsaber were steady. The woman raised her eyebrows slightly and the man chuckled and, for a moment, Allana couldn’t help but wonder about the hosts, those almost ghostly presences writhing like animals being crushed beneath a boot. The woman was in her twenties, generically pretty in a sharp-featured sort of way, with her brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. She could have been a student at the local college whose professor wondered why she’d never come back to class, whose roommate was starting to get worried about a perpetually empty bed. The man was tall and muscular with a nose too big for good looks but, if it weren’t for the sneer he was wearing as he looked her over like he was deciding what the best cut of meat would be, he could almost have been called pleasant-looking. He might have been someone’s boyfriend or husband, someone’s father, but all she could sense of him, not the thing riding him, was a shade, insubstantial and mostly composed of fear.

“Peeking, huh?” The woman said, moving closer despite the warning pass Allana made with her lightsaber. “What’s that saying kiddo? Curiosity killed the cat? Well,” she flung out a hand and Allana scrambled to throw up a Force shield before the psychic ‘push’ could hit her, “you seem like a nice girl. How about I do you a favor sweetheart?” Allana opened her mouth to retort, readying a Force blast of her own, when she felt it, another demon but not embodied, and spun to see a cloud of black smoke coiled behind her. She couldn’t stop herself from gasping, from losing a little of her grip on her fear as she spun away and swung out with her lightsaber, cutting through the cloud without harming it, only delaying the inevitable for a moment. “Go ahead and scream while you can,” the woman advised, voice a mockery of gentle advice as she and the other demon advanced from behind while Allana threw up a Force barrier to keep the smoke away from her. I can’t block them both at once, she realized, not forever, not without slipping up for a moment and then I’ll be--

“Jaina?” she called, trying to keep her voice calm, just checking in, just making sure her aunt was okay and that she’d be there, they wouldn’t be able to hold her back and she’d get there in time, because she had to. And then, as if it had only been taunting her all along, the smoke flowed through her barrier as effortlessly as water through a sieve and, taking advantage of her moment of surprise, the man grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms to her sides. She had a second to lash out with the Force, flinging the woman back into the alley wall with a sickening crunch that, she would realize later, meant whoever this host was even if she were freed she’d probably never be going home again, and knocking the man back into the van. If it was a fight she would have won it but it was a distraction and the demon capitalized on it. She managed half of her aunt’s name, her voice not even trying to sound calm now, “JAIN--“ and then there was only the smoke in her eyes and nose and lungs and it was like suffocating, like being pushed underwater, except she couldn’t resurface, couldn’t escape that first moment of drowning and panic.

A few moments later Allana’s body hopped out of the van it had just passed through. The demon pulled the corners of her mouth up into a grin far too languid for Allana’s usual perpetual buzz of energy. “Hey Aunt Jaina,” the demon laughed and flipped her eyes black, pitching her voice little-girl high before returning to a more normal tone and making a disgusted face. “God, how do you stand teaching this? I heard about you and your brother, that power, that darkness, but this? I have to say it’s disappointing. I feel like I’m riding fucking Pollyanna. Still,” her hand reached up to toy idly with a few strands of hair, trace her jaw line, “she’s got the power. And you can always spice up bland right? Maybe I’ll make her a little more tolerable for whoever ends up permanently assigned to this meatsuit. Show her some things. You remember how the memory exchange works don’t you? Both ways. Better than Netflix. Surround sound, touch, taste, and smell.”

She flicked out the lightsaber and lifted it up to eye-level, staring curiously at its glow for a moment before adding, as if it were an afterthought, “Don’t think of kicking up a fuss. You know, running, babbling Latin, calling for help over that Force bond of yours. I mean, unless you really do find this kid as unbearable as I do. I suppose she doesn’t really need both of her arms. Her mother seems to get by with one. Either way, before you ripped me out of this body I could make it so that you wouldn’t want what was left. Now,” she pointed the lightsaber at Jaina, “how about you show me that tattoo?”

--

Demon number two was in the shape (body, not just shape body) of a younger man, in a pizza-delivery uniform, bright red like the acne on his face, and he’s laughing while his partner gets the majority of her attention, until the blade of her lightsaber is edging closer to his neck, and then he stops laughing, switches to taunting instead, all “You won’t do it, will you?” and “Come on, I dare you,” and she knows better than that, deactivates the blade, and then they’re both talking at once, over eachother and with eachother and somehow in sync without being in sync at all, and she pushes and the van rocks wit the force of it, there’s a loud crackling sound and when she lets them go (in shock, in horror, in panic at the sound of Allana’s voice screaming her name and being cut off) they slump to the ground like every one of their bones is shattered, and the twin clouds of smoke rise out of the broken bodies and rush off into the night - just as Allana comes out this side of the van, not-Allana because her presence is all wrong and filled up with demon smoke, and it makes Jaina’s skin crawl.

Her quiet, almost growled “Let her go,” is drowned out when the demon starts talking and Jaina’s panic kicks up a couple of notches at the words, because at least back home if this had happened, Allana would have had the option of getting a replacement that would be practically impossible to tell apart from the real thing. Sure, it would have been bad, it was bad when it happened to Tenel Ka, but there would be an option, for her to choose or discard like her mother had done - but here, that wasn’t really an option, it would be primitive at best, and the medical care wasn’t good enough...

And even if that was just a bluff, there was enough that could be done to a person without that, enough from the inside that would leave Allana a mess when it was over (if it was over). Compliance was the only option. She did her best to close down her presence in the Force - the opposite of calling for help - and nodded slowly.

Her own lightsaber is tossed aside (nudged, with the Force, so it falls down the nearest drainage opening; if she gets out of this alive, she’ll get it later, but letting demons get two of them is not an option), and she holds her hands out as one would to prove they’re not reaching for a weapon, not going to try anything, slowly moving her hand up to tug at the edge of her shirt, moving the fabric aside to reveal the black ink there.
---

The demon grinned at the panicked expression that flashed across Jaina’s face. “Don’t worry, I’ll let her go in a minute if you don’t mess this up. You two are part of a shipment. Boss wants some new toys for people much more special than me. I just get to test-drive the new car. Perks of being the gopher.” She flipped the lightsaber in her hand, plainly fond of the weapon, then, as Jaina pulled up the hem of her shirt, steadied it again and stepped forward. Inside her own head Allana did the mental equivalent of throwing herself against the bars of a cage but it was useless, her hands didn’t even shake as the demon advanced. “Hold still, the meatsuit knows how to control this thing, but, well, accidents happen and she’s still on that annoying struggling stage. Harder to access the little things, muscle memory, when she’s doing that. Now here we go,” she brought the lightsaber up and pressed it lightly against Jaina’s tattoo, searing away the inked flesh that kept her barriers up.

When the tattoo was damaged beyond usefulness she snapped her fingers and the other two demons emerged from the van. The woman opened the door while the man took Jaina’s arm. “Not to sound like every villain from a B movie ever,” he said, twisting his host’s face up into a wryly amused grin, “but get in the van.”
-
Jaina didn’t move - the demon’s words made her want to, defiance and defensive anger and annoying struggling stage because she remembered trying to fight back, herself, remembered how useless it was and how hopeless it felt and she wanted to be fighting back, too, but there was nothing she could do because if she fought back Allana would be hurt. She didn’t want that, and she didn’t want to be responsible for it - Jacen would kill her, maybe Tenel Ka would help, and Jaina was only half convinced she’d even try to convince them not to. She braced herself for the burn - it was bad, it hurt, but she just kept her jaw clenched and only hissed at the sensation, did her best not to even flinch. She’d had worse, she reminded herself; this was just a flesh wound, it wasn’t a big deal, she’d be fine.

And then there were more demons, grabbing her and she let them move her to the van like they wanted, pulling her senses in tighter so she wouldn’t have to feel them, the grittyhotdarkwrongbadbadbad feeling of them making her feel the mental equivalent of needing to scrub herself clean, and she winced as the motion of being shoved into the van jarred the burn on her skin, the fabric sticking and pulling uncomfortably there. She focused on that, on the gritty feeling of the van’s floor under her palms, and not on the demons, trying to return to some kind of calm state so she could figure out a way out of this.
-
Allana’s body, still under the demon’s control, entered the van a moment behind Jaina and settled on the floor next to her. The demon tossed the lightsaber to the man who had climbed in after them as the woman started the van. “See you back at the ranch kids,” she said, “take care of the toys.” Then she turned and raised her eyebrows at Jaina, “Almost forgot these,” she reached out and yanked on her necklace, breaking the clasp against her neck, and then slid the bracelet off her wrist. She paused for a moment with the bracelet in her hand, pinched delicately between Allana’s thumb and forefinger by the chain, and held it up to eye level. “Impressive craftsmanship,” she said, before getting to her feet and launching both charms overhand out of the open door. “Have a good trip, please keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times, we’d really hate to lose the useful bits,” she added before raising two fingers in a mocking salute and pouring up out of Allana’s throat in a cloud of black smoke.

The teenager had time to stagger forwards, reach out for something to get her balance, and then the hilt of her lightsaber met the back of her head and she crumpled to the floor before she could so much as speak. The demon in the man stepped over her and, without preamble or quip, swung out with the lightsaber again, nodding as she slumped over beside her niece. “Good to go,” he said then settled into the front seat. “Boss’ll be pleased.”


TL;DR for reactiony purposes: Forcetypes will probably sense things. Allana gets possessed briefly, in order to convince Jaina not to wig out/come along peacefully, and then both of them get knocked out... React accordingly~