Two towering, tinted, transparisteel doors slide open to grant you access to the central chamber of the Combat Training Halls. The main room is wide and open and as large as as a holoball field. Tall walls stretch towards a domed ceiling that is made up of rows of ambient lights that spread out and fill the room with soft even lighting that eliminates any shades or shadows. Those same walls are lined around the perimeter with racks and stacks of varied weaponry: everything from swords and polearms to rifles and flamethrowers.

There are two signs that hover over each weapon rack to create an alternating motif in the Combat Training Hall: “No Explosions” and “Accorded Neutral Territory”. While the first is fairly obvious, the second speaks to the single law of the Training Halls: all members of the Brotherhood are welcome, and no member is to be killed or maimed without incurring the wrath of the Grand Master and the Inquisitorius.

A trio of training dummies are statically set up and spread out in a line, each made out of a blend of alloys and padding that can withstand blows from any standard weaponry with the exception of lightsaber blades. To the side of the dummies, a large sparring mat has been stretched out to create a larger footprint than the typical shockboxing ring. The padding is good for helping teach new combat students how to take a fall without injury and offers firm footing, but the hard rubber mat is hardly forgiving.

Behind the sparring area is a door that leads to a small archives that combat students can use to view holorecordings of fights and duels from the past as well as relevant information on combat tactics, techniques, and forms. On the opposite side of the archives at the far end of central room is the locker room that members can safely store their equipment.

The final and probably most important element of the Combat Training Hall is the onsite Med Ward. The maglock door is sealed off and can only be opened by an attending Medic. The Medical facilities feature state of the art bacta tanks for recovery and aftercare. A combination of observation and waiting room rests adjacent to the recovery center and features two large monitors that display a live feed of the central room.

The Combat Halls are staffed around the clock, allowing combat students and mentors alike to come and go as they please at odd or regular hours. It also reserved for members looking to prove their worth to compete in the Antei Combat Center.

[Venue Note: Weapons incorporated into your match are allowed to be used, even if not listed on your Weapon Load Out for the match itself. Skill usage and all other ACC rules and guidelines still applies.]

Green light blazed in the sky and rent the heavens apart.

The breach was like a wound bleeding, raw and ragged at the edges, verdant glow seething out like puss. It pulsed, and the tear widened, darkened, shadows spilling ink and oil from its depths. They came like rain and soaked the land, splattering heavy and warm, more like blood than water, the sound of the spatters just wrong to the ear. The wind lifted, and the smell was rot and spice and iron.

Dralin watched the phenomenon with a calm, tranquil gaze, unblinking even as the crowds surrounding him wailed and panicked. Some pointed, gasping, shaking, as bolts of emerald lightning leapt down and speared the sprawling golden city around them, cracking buildings, tossing rubble. The gleaming golden streets ran to ebony, then onyx, blacker and blacker; the towers crumbled, and the fine mansions and palaces charred. Folk in finery wailed as their youth and worn riches wilted, leaving them destitute husks.

But as Dralin looked on, he noticed a strangeness in the maelstrom: though the lightning struck at some men and women in particular, it never seemed to burn them. The only thing it broke were the chains they wore, freeing them to run in the furor of a world falling down.

Heavy-handed, this one, the Gray Jedi thought as he slowly inhaled, pulling his mind gently back into his body as much as he was pulling air into his lungs. He blinked, and his vision cleared, and once more he was folded in a quiet corner of the Combat Center. He had never really left; he had felt the mat beneath him and the cool wall at his back, the circulating of recycled air where nonexistent jade flames had danced in his eyes. The Human stretched leisurely, unfurling from his twisted position like a lazy manka cat.

The Center was a surprisingly decent place to meditate during its odd hours, somewhat isolated from the otherwise disconcerting and rigid business of Arx's capital. His ship was better, but Dralin knew that if he was to change anything, he would have to reintegrate himself in time. If others came and went while he reposed here, then it was an easy thing, and he spent the time observing them and their practice bouts. None truly bothered him, save a few approaches that he declined. He had a schedule to keep, and had yet to plan any fights of his own into it.

Speaking of which...

The man stood, brushing at the seat of his well-worn trousers, and looked down and right at his R3-D9 droid. "It is about time for tea, isn't it?" he asked, and the droid beeped savagely at him, muttering about boiling water and its various lethal applications to organics. Dralin's mouth almost twitched into a shape like a smile. He would have his snack and ponder on the day's vision while he ate; some aspects were obvious, and other details were masked in the Force's sometimes indecipherable prose.

Just as he began walking for the entrance, his senses trilled, and he sidestepped as easy as breathing, dodging out of the way of a fallen...training saber?

Not a heartbeat later, someone fell out of the sky and landed promptly on Dralin.

They crashed hard in a tangle of limbs, air knocking out of chests and heads ringing. The Plaguein clutched at his face and groaned, his head absolutely throbbing, along with many other parts of him.

"Ahh, ah, kriff, sithspit, ow. Frang, man, my bad, ah, you okay? Bogan, my back..." the mysterious ceiling person babbled, switching to another language to babble something that sounded like curses.

"Ow," Dralin said while the other body disentangled from his. He focused through the aching for a few moments, trying to quiet some of the pain. The Force was kind, but only a little. His neck and muscles still tingled with what were sure to be bruises as he sat up, coming face-to-face with a hand, open and offering.

The Coruscantian grasped the other man's offered grip, allowing himself to be assisted upright. He stared at the fingers curled around his forearm: bright green, covered in black ink and striped in scars. His mouth dropped open suddenly.

"Uh," said the malachite man, "you...alright there, dude?"

Dralin realized he had been holding on to his sort of-assailant for a long minute, examining his arm like it was some lab experiment. He released him and took a step back, his features returning to their typical calm. He had been briefly startled — his visions didn't usually resolve so abruptly, or so...literally.

"What were you doing?" he asked instead of answering, watching closely as the man — a young man, a Mirialan, all tattoos and rough exterior over eyes older than his face — seemed to flush and scratched at the back of his neck.

"Er," the Mirialan uttered, one of his dreadlocks springing free of their tie and flopping over his eyes. He brushed it aside. "I've been trying to see how high I can jump, when I amplify the strength in my legs. And. Uhm. I wondered if I couldn't, like...launch myself up higher. Telekinetically."

The Human's lips almost grinned again.

"And how did that work out for you?"

"Oh, great," replied the boy sarcastically. The bruises all over his frame made more sense, now. "Anyway, I'm really sorry about dropping in on ya. Didn't see you there before I took off, otherwise I never woulda tried."

"It is...not too much trouble," Dralin compromised, still observing closely. "You are an apprentice then? And interested in the study of telekinesis?"

"Totally, yeah. What about you? You a Jedi?"

"Not quite."

"But a Force-user?"

"Indeed." By way of demonstration, Dralin summoned the Force to himself, lifting his forgotten droid and spiraling it through the air without even a hand gesture. The R3 screeched a shrill series of beeps.

"He, uh, doesn't sound happy."

"He is very much not. He would like to murder us both, in great detail."

"Fun." The boy seemed intrigued, and he turned to Dralin as the Human set his unit back down. "You seem real good at that. Got any pointers?"

"I may be inclined to show you," Dralin allowed carefully. Why not foster a good skill? And besides, no vision was to be ignored... "You may join me for my repast if you like, and then we may return."

"Your res-what?"

He resisted casting his cybernetic eyes to the ceiling. Barely.

"It is a light meal. In this instance, the best biscuits and tea Aliso can offer."

The Mirialan seemed to think about it, then shrugged. "I guess, sure. Name's Ruka."

"Dralin Fortea."

They didn't shake hands, which suited the Human just fine. He felt no need to be any friendlier than he was already behaving.

"Just let me grab my crap," Ruka said, walking off. As he did so, he muttered, "Aliso? Why's that sound familiar...?"

"It is the Plaugeian homeworld," Dralin answered to the air, folding his hands calmly. "It ought to be familiar to any of the Brethren."

Ruka stopped.

The Force trembled, lifting the fine hairs on the back of Dralin's neck.

Slowly, the Mirialan turned around to glare over his shoulder. "You're from Plagueis?" he growled, and Dralin blinked placidly.

"Indeed I am, though I have been gone a long, long while." He arched a brow. "What is it to you?"

Ruka had spun back to face him fully now, and his fists were clenched, his whole demeanor gone ragged. "My teachers have told me about you people. You're slavers."

"It is true, we employ slaves."

"There's no 'employ' about it, they're kriffing slaves!"

"Choose your semantics as you will. Do you have a point?"

The boy bared his teeth. "You're disgusting."

"I own no slaves myself," replied Dralin easily. "And whence I did, those under my service in my House were well-kept."

"That doesn't make it better!"

"Does it not? It is not the most moral of practices, I will agree; I have little taste for it these days, even discourage the crueler of my compatriots. But it is only a fact of the universe. In Plagueis, and in innumerable other societies. Sad, perhaps, but still truth."

"Are you seriously trying to kriffing tell me you're sorry or something?! You don't deserve to be sorry! If you let it happen and walk on by then you're just as bad as the guy holding the whip. Just a fact? Kark that."

With a quick-draw flurry of motion, the Mirialan slid two blades out of the sheaths hanging off of his person: one sapphire, one amethyst, both held tight in his emerald grip.

Dralin raised a brow.

"What are you going to do here, young one? Attack me? Kill me? For an ideal? What change with that effect? I am one man. You may as well rage at the sun for rising."

"I really don't give one flying frak how pretty you talk, slimesucker," snarled Ruka. His violet eyes flashed gold, rimmed in red. He spat, "Somebody has to stand up for the poor frangers who can't stand up for themselves!"

Any other reproach the Human may have given was cut off as the Knight charged, leaping high in a Force-augmented arc likely much like he had been practicing. Dralin moved as wind and water, smoothly drawing and activating his saber, raising it in a guard as he sank himself into the tides of the Force.

The expected clash did not come, however; even as Dralin's body ebbed and flowed to catch the blades coming towards him, Ruka turned his hand, not slashing at Dralin, but slamming his fist into the mats when he landed just in front of the Plagueian.

The wave of power that bloomed forward knocked the Human back, staggering him badly enough to send him sprawling. He contorted, hands circling to slam into the ground and push him into a roll aside instead of crumpling in a heap. As he came back upright in a crouch, saber held to his side, he really did smile, wide and toothy.

Then, he raised his hand and sent a telekinetic hammer blow slamming into the Mirialan in replay.

Ruka's ears rang as the strike caught him squarely where his patterned cheekbone met his ruined ear. His head rocked back as the attack's force lifted him off his feet.

While the Arconan's telekinetic attack had been impressive, it was also imprecise. As Dralin had hoped, he had struck a nerve playing off of Ruka's assumptions. In truth, the wayward Plaguian despised Aliso's reliance on slavery, but the boy's hair-trigger reaction had proved too useful a teaching tool not to use. Before he could master any power he might hold, considerable as it may be, Ruka must first learn to read situations as they are, rather than as he expects. After all, they hadn't even been good lies.

As the boy landed, the Coruscanti straightened from his crouch.

"Come on, then," Dralin goaded as he paced languidly back and forth in front of his opponent. "Get up, noble hero, and strike down the monster."

The green knight responded with a wordless grunt as he sprang up from the sparring mat. The pain had nearly subsided by the time he regained verticality, but not entirely, so he took a moment to let Dralin pace as he shook his head.

"Tell me," Dralin continued, "how many people do you know? Personally, I mean."

Ruka narrowed his eyes at his opponent and held his weapons at the ready.

"However many that is, I can guarantee that I have killed more slave soldiers on the field."

The Mirialan gave a growl as he lunged, and his blades flashed violet and azure in the ambient lighting of the training room. Dralin batted the kukri aside and spun toward it to evade the slender sapphire blade. He twisted, and sent Ruka stumbling forward a couple of steps with a gentle push on the lower back. If the lad insisted on hand-to-hand, he would not find a ready target in Dralin.

"That was including the ones under my command, of course." The boy was capable of more, he knew, but he needed the extra push. Dralin was rusty at this sort of thing, but young Ruka seemed committed to what he was selling.

"Frak this," Ruka spat as he flung down his ceremonial weapons. A blade of blue light sprang into existence with a familiar snap-hiss, and both duelists instinctively fell into their ready stances.

Dralin hid a smile; he could see that their stances were quite similar. His training had carried him beyond Juyo years ago, but the same form's basics still applied to Vapaad. Maybe one day the Arconan would be ready to surrender his weapon to the Force, Dralin mused, but not until he takes control of his impulsive nature.

His senses screamed at him, pulling him from his thoughts as Ruka took advantage of Dralin's mental retreat. His body had felt the attack coming, and the Force guided his hand with more surety than his own nervous system. The Force was an energy field, it has been said, generated by all living things. To Dralin, it felt like gravity. If he allowed, it would pull him toward the next inevitable moment.

The lightsaber in Dralin's hand ignited, bathing him in an emerald glow. The Mirialan rushed forward, his advanced punctuated by a jump and a twist, both intended to throw the Human off from the intended attack angle. Dralin could see his next steps, like a half-remembered dream, or a tune he could just barely remember. He danced to that tune and found himself neatly sidestepping to the left, and his emerald blade caught Ruka's blue.

They stood there a moment, each with feet planted as he tried to out-bind the other's lightsaber blade. Subtle movements indicated the shifts in balance as each tried to gain leverage on the other, and Dralin could feel Ruka's focus sharpening. The boy was getting serious.

Again, Dralin's senses screamed, but he couldn't withdraw a hand from his lightsaber hilt in time before Ruka's fist smashed into his face around their saber lock.

It was...really very hard to do much of anything with a broken nose.

The pain was blinding, and the worst of it wasn't the agony itself, but the way his eyes screwed shut and watered without his consent, the way his mouth and nostrils flooded with blood and mucus and made breathing almost impossible. Dralin spat, hearing the spittle sizzling on his lightsaber blade as it was knocked away, and stumbled raggedly left, trying to get away from his opponent even as his head spun.

His senses were like a broken siren blaring out of sync, or a kettle left on a gasser to scream; one incessant, shrieking note of bad bad bad that didn't relent or give him any reprieve. The Plagueian used all his long-studying training to parse through the white noise warning, to focus and feel the most minute of shifts of intent as Ruka swung at him this way, then that. He dodged aside of another barrage of plasmic strikes, backpedalling across the mats several meters while the Mirialan chased him, enraged but fixated coldly on his target.

Perhaps I played him too well, the Human thought fleetingly as he shook himself and struggled to push through the agony radiating from his face. He spat again and breathed in gulps through his mouth - his noe was swollen and clogged shut. But he could endure this. This, and much worse. Little physical pain could reflect the deeper demons Dralin knew so well, underneath the quietude of one's own consciousness. Guilt bit sharper than any knife. This boy would learn.

Dralin thought of his vision. Storms could rage, or storms could be tamed.

Or perhaps he still needs to be pushed further.

In the heartbeats that he had been thinking, the Human and Mirialan had nearly circled the training center, and Ruka was evidently growing agitated again, lightning crawling up and down his arms. He lifted a hand from his saber as if to release a bolt. Dralin took a deep breath for fortification, twisted around, and stopped, lifting his own palm. With the Force thrumming in hiss words, the Savant said, "You want to kill me for what I've done."

Ruka paused, nostrils flaring, eye golden and fingertips crackling. His features screwed up in a nasty, wild-eyed fever, and he tossed away his lightsaber, the blue blade winking out like a candle flame.

"I...I'll...kill you," echoed the young Knight in a growl, his whole body vibrating with the rage, hands shaking.

"I'm a monster. A slaver. I hurt slaves. And you want to kill me for it. You're right," Dralin went on, tendrils of power snaking into the boy's mind and seething there, polluting, so easily. It played across his tattooed and scarred face as clearly as a holovid. "You want to kill a monster."

"Monster," Ruka snarled, veins under his eyes popping and dark. "I'LL KILL YOU!"

Both hands lifted into the air, lightning spraying from black-nailed fingertips, but the attack went wide around either side of the Plagueian, barely aimed. Dralin smirked and responded with a merciless telekinetic blow, fist swinging out to guide the Force-manifested energy as it slammed into the Mirialan and threw him across the gymnasium.

The young Sith hit the ground rolling, grunting in pain, but he didn't stay down. Incensed with his murderous mission, he rocked back to his feet and flung out his hands, face a rictus of effort. An entire weapons rack wobbled and rattled, and then it and all its accoutrements were flying towards Dralin, a rain of debris made deadly as wooden training weapons splintered into ragged spikes. The Human dove right in a roll, shielding the back of his neck and head while the mess of projectiles cut and stabbed into his flesh, his hands stinging while his coat somewhat protected his back. The rack crashed down halfway between both combatants, breaking at its joints.

"Enough of that," the Plagueian muttered as he unfurled from his defensive crouch and stood, yanking out splinters embedded deeply in his hands and shoulders. He shook the few droplets of blood away, brows stoney and lip curled with cool, fierce condemnation.

It took only barest flash of focus to grip the Mirialan in a godly hand, making the boy cry out as the pressure surrounded him. Dralin lifted him and slammed him back down onto the mats, once, twice. Three times.

On the forth slam, the Human released his hold, and Ruka laid still, moaning. The Savant stalked forward, lightsaber lit, casting his opponent's form in a verdant glow.

"Look at yourself," Dralin said down to the Knight. "You assaulted me. Why? Because an authority told you to? Because you were told my peers and I were evil and terrible, that we all supported the destruction and degradation of sentient rights, that it was proper and good to hate us? We are no different, child. You took what you were told was right and acted accordingly. So did I. It took me time to realize what I had been told was right was wrong. You should open your eyes sooner than not."

"It's...not the same," spat Ruka, seething. He pushed himself up to his elbows and swayed there, his gaze languid, as if concussed. "I know what's wrong and...ri...what's not from the start! Someone saying it's okay don't make it that way. I'd...have known better than you."

"It is easy to think so from your position, but the truth of it is you would have done the same thing if your teachers told you the slaves liked their work, the homes we gave them, that they were happy and needed our guidance and support."

"No!"

"Yes. You presume free thinking is so easy? It isn't. Most people are nerfs following the herd without question."

"No, no…" He shook his head like a dog shaking off a buzzing fly. "You're wrong. You're if you think I'll be just like you," the Mirialan swore, as vehemently as any life oath. "I know who I am...you don't. I'm not stupid or...mean or...that, like you. You think you're helping me or something? You're just in my way."

His senses shrieked.

Ruka's eyes flashed gold, and he lunged forward, curling around Dralin's leg with his whole body. The Plagueian kicked to shake him off, but the boy just took the blow to his skull and hung on, violet-white arcs of light crackling into existence. The Human tore away with another kick, too late, as Ruka hurled lightning at him like some young, scorned godling.

Dralin's nerves lit with fire and freezing, muscles all locking up and spasming. He arched in place, then collapsed forward, joining the Sith on the mats as he laid for a moment without air, body unable to move. Then, his diaphragm unclenched, expanded, and he gasped in gulps of breath.

The Mirialan was crawling his way upright, blood caking his teeth from where they must have split his lip.

"I'm not gonna be a monster just cause anyone tells me to...not my coach, not you, not any...anybody," huffed the Sith. He looked away, across the mats, then lifted his hand. A moment later, his saber flew into his palm, and he clutched it like a precious gem to his chest. "I can be better than that...than you. So...ya know what...kriff off."

Then the boy limped away, going about collecting his remaining weapons before stumbling unsteadily towards the medbay. Dralin laid on the floor — it was rather not bad, with the thick mats, if much too disgusting for his refined tastes — and caught his breath, feeling his abused muscles ache and twinge and slowly relax back to normal.

Perhaps his technique still needed some adjustments. Oh, well. Dralin would learn, to pass on the important things he had internalizes, to guide his lost comrades. It would just take time and effort and no small bit of guilty hope.

And as his R3 unit wandered over and rammed repeatedly into his knee like the wheeled brat it was, he thought, It can happen. Maybe the storm will abate yet.

And then, in a surge of sudden, sour realization, Wait...I missed my tea!

Ruka pressed his advantage and drove the Human back several paces with heavy swings of his blade. The Mirialan spun and planted his heavy boot into Dralin's stomach, and watched with satisfaction as the older man doubled over, stumbled backwards, and dropped his deactivated lightsaber.

"Someone needs to stop you," Ruka spat. "You think anyone will mourn a kriffing slaver?"

Dralin appeared to steady his footing and clutch at his stomach, and the act of righting himself seemed painful. It took the Arconan a few moments to realize that he hadn't wounded his opponent nearly to that extent, but those moments were all the Plagueian needed. At the same time, Ruka raised one hand while Dralin raised both of his. Lightning, borne from the Arconan's righteous fury, erupted from Ruka's fingers, and with a fierce clash of sparks it struck a wall of emerald light.

As pure energy threw itself at Dralin's barrier, Ruka followed. He released his burning grip on the Force, and Dralin's eyes adjusted to see his snarling green visage mere feet away. Ruka's other fist was already flying through the air, and Dralin could feel the potential within it. He dropped his protection at the last moment, ducked, and called his weapon to his hand. The Mirialan swung at the empty air above Dralin's head, and the weapons in the rack against the opposite wall were thrown in every direction, with a dent in the rack's frame in their place.

The Arconan, lacking the resistance he had expected to overwhelm, stumbled off-balance. Dralin activated his lightsaber in one hand and pulled Ruka to the training mat with the other. The tip of his saber hovered inches from the Mirialan's neck, and Dralin fought to hide how hard he was panting as his eyes glittered in the emerald glow.

"Save that fire," Dralin said with a slight chuckle in between breaths. With a deft motion, he deactivated his lightsaber, and tossed the hilt down next to Ruka. "You'll burn down plenty with it, I'm sure."

"I don't get it, slaver," the Arconan muttered as he narrowed his eyes, but Dralin made no further effort against him. "You're surrendering?"

"You tap into that deep well of power to right wrongs," Dralin explained as he gingerly felt his cheekbone. "You made an assumption about me, so I wanted to see how far you'd take it." When Ruka's eyes failed to light up in recognition of Dralin's tactic as he had hoped, the Coruscanti sighed and shook his head. "I see Arconans haven't gotten any smarter in my absence."

The rogue Plagueian extended a hand and dropped his usual guise of upper-crust superiority. "I'm Dralin Fortea, captain of The Bad Idea. I need to go put down a group of slavers, and I'm putting together a team."