Another Time
"You know what? Next time I pick where we go on a date!" Mavrick shouted as he ducked a blaster bolt from one of several gangsters taking up position on the opposite end of the dark alley.
"Would you quit whining for one force-forsaken moment!?" Dawn Syndulla snapped back. The mottled brown and green twi'lek was pressed against the side of a dumpster with a blaster clutched in her left fist and she occasionally popped out from behind it to send a glowing red bolt racing towards the gangsters.
"I'm sorry but coming to Gorse was a really bad idea. Seriously the whole livable side of the place is always dark! It's a gangster's paradise." Mavrick grumbled, the dark hued human had both of his blasters out and was silently cursing his luck of running into the spirited twi'lek.
"I hear you! But this is the last place my parents were seen before their disappearance." Dawn said.
Mavrick nodded, that was the whole reason he was with her, the reason she found him. Dawn was just trying to find her parents.
From what she had told him; Kanan Jarrus and Hera Syndulla disappeared just after her fourteenth birthday on a mission to Gorse. Ironically enough this was also the planet where the two first met and the caller had claimed that there was a First Order operation taking place on the planet. Twelve years passed and their daughter had come to find them.
That was the short of the story at least. Mavrick had joined her crew less than six months ago during a mercenary raid on a refugee convoy fleeing a doomed world called Geoa. The planet's many tectonic plates were tearing the surface apart, forcing the native people to run to the stars for New Republic aid.
Unfortunately for them the Black Sun crime syndicate had other ideas for the people of Geoa. And guess which side he was on? The Sun paid well and the stack of credits they handed him was more than enough for Mavrick to shove his moral reservations down his throat.
It hadn't even been much of a fight with the poor refugees to start with and by the time Dawn had arrived in her shiny VCX-100 light freighter called the Phoenix it was over. Mavrick had snuck onto her ship with a group of escaped refugees and had been able to get both of his swords across her throat within five minutes of being onboard. She hadn't even flinched which was impressive considering how very close to decapitation she was. Mavrick would never understand how but when she started talking it hit something inside him, a note, or chord, or something. Maybe it was the passion in her voice, the cowering children of the refugees he snuck onboard with, or maybe it was his conscience finally giving him the kick in the ass he needed.
They escaped with the refugees onboard and came back to find the other ships had gone.
Why she decided to let him stay was also a mystery that he stilled wondered about. He heard the story about how her parents met, was that it? Was she trying to follow in her parents footsteps? Did she just see something in him that he didn't? Maybe she believed in second chances?
Mavrick was brought out of his brief flashback by the sound of something 'clinking' down the alley towards him.
"Grenade!" Dawn shouted.
Oh kriff!