The warm sea air was fiercely salty. Seagulls squawked in tired cacophony, ignoring the foetid stench of their feathery wings. They flew in haste, as if chattering about the toil left for them that day, and the current of the air was just not strong enough to hold their soft arms for that long. The waves knifed into the grainy sand, disregarding their attempts to dwell in their cushion of friends. Some were even taken by the spiteful waves, to a foreign land, never to return again.

Her fingers drew various shapes into the sand. Spirals, lines, flowers and doves. The water was so serene, from what she could see at least. Ignorant to the brutality of its own waves, ignorant to the exhausted fish in its endless waters. Even ignorant to the wails of a small child, sniffling at her abducted doll. The sea was evil. It stole the happiness of the young children. Withdrew the lives of many under its blanket of fluid self. Maybe it felt it was kind, coveting a whole world under the murky waves. Yet unmoved to everything that went on underneath. What went on underneath anyway?

She wouldn’t know. It didn’t take her existence. Will never either. Never hers. She loved the sea. She even loved the reek of the hair curling sodium chloride. She loved putting her aching feet into its warm waters, enjoying the gush of the lush, white foam under her toes. She wriggled them about a bit.

It was the same place. The exact same place she left to her foreign land here. Kidnapped or out of will, she wasn’t sure. But what she did remember was that she went. And she stayed. For some time that is. Lexia. Yes, that’s where she went.

She got up and made her way to the vicious sea water, stepped in and laughed. A looker-on would call her crazy, a young woman in a white dress twirling around in the merciless waves. Almost phantom-like. The clouds closed in and the sky was grayer than gray. It seemed that she was even in the middle of the storm. She didn’t care. Aretsuya was quite fond of what went on there. Ruthless it may be, but it was docile to whoever could tame it. Flummery, all this rubbish about the hazardous waters. The sea invited her in for a splash, and she gladly accepted.

The girl tumbled over, and giggled with childish mirth as a jet of salty liquid washed over her. Her dress was translucent now, but who was there to see? Just her marine friends and the winds. It howled, to show its appreciation. She grinned. She tilted her head back and uttered a strange, treacherous shriek of laughter.

The lucid white dress she wore clung to her pale skin, wrinkling and creasing here and there, but remaining still elegant after all the salt water it had been forced to wade through. One would not be able to tell it had been a hand-down stolen from an innocent child. It was after all, fresh and pretty with a hint of childlike behavior beneath its hems and laces. But still innocent. Who would’ve thought.

The girl did not even know how long she sat there afterwards. She was too absorbed with the waves to even care. Funny, that when you fall into the comforting liquid, all else means nothing. Almost like a cleansing moment, born again once you emerge from the waves. Until something takes away that moment from you. Until she had caught sight of that little doll again. She picked it up. It was tattered, but still pretty. Still plastered with a freakish smile on its ragged, artless face. Still fresh. Wasn’t it supposed to melt away beneath the sheet of brackish water, like the former entrants to the expanse?

It scared her. It wasn’t supposed to come back. It was supposed to disappear forever, just like a certain man had. She wept over him sometimes, still. Not because she felt any fondness for him, but because she was afraid. Afraid of what was becoming to her. And he was the end. He would destroy her, even in death. Well, at least the thoughts of him would.

Aretsuya took to the sand once more, crushing the dainty little marionette between her fingers and grimacing at the sharp plastic arms, impaling her clammy palms. She dropped down, hugged her knees, and whimpered, along with the lonesome child in the back, unaware of the fact that her little plastic friend had come back, only to be broken into pieces once more. Her head whirred. Her body shook. She fell onto the gritty sand, and lay there. No. Not again…

Demnit Station, Budpock

“I see,” acknowledged the customs official, “everything appears to be in order.”

“Appears?” questioned Adrian, narrowing his eyes into emerald slits, “appears is not good enough. I am Investigator Adrian Ravenna of CSIS. Everything had better be in perfect order. After the terrorist attack at Brandenburg, security was supposed to be tightened up. Make sure you run their ID cards through twice if you have to. Here is my governmental ID card.”

“Ah, sir yes sir. Welcome to Budpock, Investigator.”

The Jensaarai exasperatedly nodded back, forcing himself to bite back his tongue. Budpock may be out in the Boonies compared to the Core Worlds or the Confederation Proper, but that was pretty poor. Thank the maker we have CSIS teams acting as redundant security for customs right now. The Susevfian rolled his eyes, stepping through the first security checkpoint. In front of the Jensaarai Warrior stood another checkpoint, this one manned by an orderly pair of black-uniformed CSIS Internal Security Officers.

“Goodday,” greeted Ravenna, presenting his ID card to the agents.

“I will need to see your rank cylinder, Investigator, in order to verify your rank and status,” crisply stated the woman.

“Of course,” replied the dark-haired man, pulling out a polished silver cylinder.

The woman’s male counterpart, Agent Brockway, adeptly seized it from Adrian’s grasp and inserted into a reader with a click. Brockway stared intently at the computer screen, occasionally tapping a few buttons on the console. Satisfied, the agent pulled the cylinder and handed it back to the Jensaarai Warrior.

“Welcome to Budpock, Investigator,” stated Brockway, “enjoy your stay.”

“I will,” replied Ravenna, walking through the checkpoint and its security scanners.

He emerged from the spaceport onto the streets of Demnit Station. A little over a year ago, Confederation and Commonwealth Troopers had seized the city back from lawless, restoring the planet’s original government, allowing citizens to resume their normal lives. But to Adrian’s trained eyes, he could already see that the damage done had never fully healed. People eyed him cautiously, as if expecting him to whip out a vibroblade and rob them at knifepoint. Most houses still retained barred windows and other security measures a little out of place for a backwater, civilian zone. His lip twitched. It will be years before the people start becoming more comfortable among each other. It will be years for full trust to be developed. It will be years for the wounds dealt by the smugglers, pirates, and other low-lifes who controlled the station to mend. We must persevere. Unconsciously, Ravenna’s right hand slipped through his gray cloak to rest on the hilt of his lightsaber. His fingers gripped the cold, metallic hilt tightly for a second. Just as quickly as they came, his fingers uncurled, relinquishing their grasp on the weapon. He grinned at no-one in particular. Ah, the Saarai-kaar and Colonel Howe would both admonish me for even doing that. The Saarai-kaar for thinking about the lightsaber as the first means of defence, and Howe for using such a conspicuous weapon. No, the first line of personal defense is knowledge, observation. To avoid getting into bad situations by knowing your surroundings and the people around you. Something especially to remember when doing this investigation.

Ravenna stepped over to lean against the side of a less than reputable tavern. Closing his eyes, Adrian let out a deep exhale. Within seconds, his lungs assumed the rhythmic breathing taught to Jensaarai adherents for meditation. He focused on expanding his senses and was immediately overwhelmed by a sea of stimuli: the waft of brandy served in the bar behind him, the endless drone of Demnit Station’s repulsorlift traffic, the salty breeze kissing his face. Immediately, the agent sorted the stimuli, forcing most of the physical to languish in the deepest recesses of his mind. He stretched out with the Force, letting his mind skim across the milieu of emotions emanating from the inhabitants of Demnit Station. From drunken euphoria to the misery of the lowest street urchin, it was a sea of passion that threatened to overwhelm and seduce the man. It was the always the same for Adrian whenever he toured some squalling city in the outer rim. He shook his head, cutting all concentration from Demnit’s inhabitants. At least no-one wants to kill me…yet.

The emotions faded into nothingness, leaving the man in peace. All except for one: an oddly alien yet familiar feeling but with a tinge of misery. A feeling he had only felt when he had trained with the other Jensaarai back at Almas Academy. He frowned. It can’t be. Kitty is still perfecting her Shadow Arts and Swenson his elemental powers. They’re both still there…so…so who is this? I feel no anger or hate, so that rules out the Sith. He blinked. Perhaps this isn’t quite what the Rear-Admiral was thinking about in his orders, but this could be important. Those orders can wait. Besides, this could be a threat later on. The man mentally probed, feeling out the general location of the other Force attuned person. The sea. To the sea. Pushing himself off the wall of the tavern, the agent strode down the street towards the coast of Demnit Station.

”It’ll be alright, sister. Just do whatever I tell you to do, and you’ll be just fine.”

The woman touched her forehead. Immediately, her body seized up. She stopped breathing.

She plummeted.

Down, down, down, where to, she did not know.

What was going on ?

Aeons later, her eyes opened, her body ached. Where was she? She closed her eyes, hoping everything would change. It did.

The petite body leaned on a corroded lamp post, illuminated by the pallid glow of the full moon. She was taking short, shallow breaths, small drops of perspiration forming on her dank forehead. She raised her chin up, and let her eyes linger on the walls ahead of her.

She was tremendously exhausted. The night before, she had been sent to meet with several strange women, who not only enticed her, but terrorized her. They seemed… eerie, as if her presence was evanescent overall when next to such beings. She didn’t like them. Or maybe she just felt inferior. Especially after all the disapproving glares.

There was no sleep. Just wonder. Where was she? What was she to do here? And why was she here? She didn’t see any way in which they could help her. Except make her stronger, as they had said. Just how, she was about to find out. And she wasn’t sure if she was ready.

Walk right through the glass house. That’s exactly what Amara ordered her to do. Sounded easy enough, till she walked right in front of the door. Her body quivered, and her lungs inhaled a greater amount of oxygen. Her fingers couldn’t stay still. Opening the door itself was a hard enough task. She released the tight grasp of oxygen and pulled the door open.

There was no appearance of anything. This thought was quite comforting for a while. Walking through the corridor would’ve been easy then, if she hadn’t an uneasy squelch in the pit of her stomach. There was more here. She could sense it, and she wasn’t exactly sure how. She wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible, and made no stop to think.

She hastened her step every second; was it just the anxiety or were the walls really closing in around her? For one, the glass grew smokier by the minute, as if a mist had shaped itself on the surface and dominated the walls. She didn’t like it. She felt trapped.

She sped up. There was something here. The gut feeling, the instinct. The adrenaline pumped through her blood, her hands shook. She could barely think. Confinement did not suit Aretsuya.

She was being watched.

Running now, her primitive brain was the only part of her keeping her going, controlling her muscles to push forward, egging her on. No time for predators. Her body was going to run before it was too late. Her mind was just blank, from fear. She could hear it: the cackles, the scrapping of sharp material on glass. And the thump. Thump. Thump.

One. Two. Three. A few more steps to go. That is, if she hadn’t the feeling that the walls were sealing up around her. Claustrophobia now. Her throat was dry, she was going to choke, if she didn’t leave right there and then.

Aretsuya wasn’t sure how she reacted to them first. If she wasn’t too busy trying to bash against the glass and hurting in the process, she wouldn’t have tripped over the scaled little beings trailing behind her, and eventually, around her legs.

With flaccid, scaly skin and large, pale eyes, what they were was impossible to tell. Their jagged little claws were almost as transparent as the glass, almost as if they were a part of the shards themselves. In fact, Aretsuya wondered if the reason she couldn’t see them in the first place was because they WERE initially, a part of the glass. It sure did feel that way, when their razor sharp claws scrambled up her thigh, and she shrieked with fear at the prospect of being covered with these tiny little alien beings. She slammed her fists against the glass walls, cried out, pleaded for them to have mercy on her. She was going to be annihilated, as they crawled on top of her, in numbers. They were going to choke her to death. She fell, onto the many piles of sharp shards and claws.

“You have failed us, sister. If Force Blanket was harsh on you, how will you survive the other challenges that lie ahead?”

Aretsuya merely gasped for breath, her vacant eyes staring at the sky, the spherical orbs illuminating the crimson moon up above. She’d try harder, really. If only she knew how…

The tide was high, the waves crashed onto the many nooks and crannies of the rocks, pelting them with enough force to erode the thousands of particles away. The little creatures in between sought refuge, deeper into the cold caverns, in hopes of living a while longer. Little did they know that their home would eventually disappear. The waves would take them away, to never return, and they’d be suffocated by the force of the giant ocean tides bearing upon them.

Was that all that was really happening? Would they really remain alone for that long? Even graves are inhabited by the worms, devouring the carcass and enjoying the rotting flesh. No one is completely alone.

Aretsuya sank into the sand once more, apprehensive and a little jittery after the recollection. She remembered how she hated being the only one there, but how she hated having to run even more.

Besides, she wasn’t the only one watching the ocean tides anymore. Someone had come to witness its awesome power once more, but she didn’t want to share. There was someone there, she could feel it. And raw anxiety devoured her, yet again.

The sea.

What could be said about the sea?

A sea was as many things to nearly as many people.

To the sailor, both a source of livilihood, and a source of disaster. To the swimmer, a challenge to overcome and to enjoy. To the common man, a thing of wonder and terror. To Adrian, the sea was little more than a devastating revenant of a distant past on Elsandruu Pica. Thoughts of the tropical paradise swirled in his minds, the days at school, bludger ball, and his mother's untimely death.

The Jensaarai's dark boots pressed down on the golden plains, squashing minute grains of sands. Gazing at the sapphire suffused water, the young warrior's hand slid into his jacket, onto he cold, metallic hilt of his lightsaber. He closed his eyes and began the rhythmic breathing, focusing on the nearby aura. Turning about to see a distant figure laying prone on the sand, Ravenna blinked. That's the source of the aura. He quickened his step, advancing cautiously to the body. The man hovered over the girl.

Who the hell? This is the other Force-sensitive here? Could be a disguise though, the Saarai-kaar has mentioned the ability to make illusions with proper application of the Force. And this could be a good trap for a traditional Jedi Knight, taking the form of a miserable, young girl. His hand gripped the saber hilt tightly. The Susevfian stared the girl.

"Who are you?"