The state of the Coruscant lower-mid levels had not improved while Evaa had been gone. Dirty streets gave passage to a crowd of sentients visibly well under the Galactic Poverty Line, cloaked in garments that gave away the almost ghetto nature of this level. Unfashionable clothes reigned uncontested in the clothing market of the lower levels; ruddy work clothes for factory workers, stained second hand cloaks of women and children, dirty synthleather boots, nearly all articles pocked with patches and holes. Above her, poorly-maintained neon signs glowed feebly, often missing a few darked-out Aurebesh characters, as they advertised cheap wares from stands that were hanging on to business about as well as the people in the thoroughfare were hanging onto their rapidly shrinking (both in quantity and value) credits. Sentients of all species, from Human to Duros to Ishi Tib to those Evaa didn't even know the name of, manned the stands, mirroring the diversity of the crowd, which had a smell that was as much an offensive mixture of wildly differing, but nearly all more or less repelling, body odors as one could imagine from such a starkly heterogenous and poorly hygienically maintained rabble. The occasional run-down protocol droid, programmed to yell advertisements in a few different languages, stood stiffly next to a stand. As she watched passing by, an old spindly-limbed Czerka model calling in outdated dialects for patrons to check his master's deals on used datapads began to stutter, and eventually glitched out violently, its voice pitch veering wildly low to high as the lights behind its photoreceptors flashed in a rhythm playing off that of the Ryl word it had become stuck on - "functioning", as Evaa recognized it, in regards to the condition it alleged its wares to be in. The Selkath manning the stand angrily stalked over from where he had been making a deal with an interested Feeorin and knocked the droid in the head with the butt end of the datapad he had been in the process of getting rid of. Far from fixing the droid, the blow simply disrupted its rigid balance and it came tumbling to the ground with a crash that would have been loud if not for the relativity provided by the surrounding bustle; it laid on the permacrete ground, now silent, the rusted behind of its chasis now visible. The Feeorin took a brief glance at the wares he had been about to purchase from and quietly shuffled away, dissolving into the crowd as the Selkath turned to find his potential patron gone. The aquatic salesman sat down heavily on a nearby crate and put his fishy head in his slender-fingered hands, the droid now smoking from its processing core before him.
Evaa extracted herself from the scene and continued her search through the crowd. This was the central bazaar of this sector, and had been her prime hunting ground for targets for the past several months, and it had proven itself rife with prizes, if only one could have the patience and sleight of hand to earn them. It would not have been her first choice, of course, if not for the fact that it was the largest hub in the area on low enough levels to be almost entirely free of meddling by Republic law enforcement, but still high enough to have pickings that could fetch a decent enough price. It was almost amazing to her what she had been able to get away with down here; she'd once been able to live for a week off the proceeds of an entire speeder that she had quite literally simply walked up to in broad synthlight, sliced open the repulsorlock with a similarly full crowd walking by bearing full witness, and driven off with, with no recourse whatsoever from any authorities. The civilians turned eyes atrophied by apathy blindly away from crime; it was a fact of life here. Who was going to catch the perpetrators, the Republic? They were a mile above, debating in comfortable Senate platforms about ways to resolve their massive debt, their administrative forces stretched thin across the planet and the Galaxy at large. That was as likely a prospect as a Jedi coming down from the Temple and healing the sick child coughing in her mother's arms as Evaa walked past.
With sharp eyes, she spotted it. A boulbous-headed Bith was standing near an alleyway, busking fruitlessly for credits in a black orchestral uniform pointlessly clean in the dirty streets. He played a kloo horn, as polished and shiny as the uniform, the pegs flashing intermittently from between the alien's practiced fingers. The notes, short of bending slyly into and out of blue notes as from the fingers and mouth of a seasoned jizz player, were choked into submission by the crowd and the noise, uncaring for sweet sounds in such a sour environment. Evaa found her way through the crowd, pushing aggressively as she had learned long ago was necessary for accomplishing anything on the lower levels, to make herself the sole audience member in front of the Bith, only receiving a single shove in return along the way from an angry Bothan. Planting her feet in a respectful stance and folding her arms, she made a face of intent listening watching the Bith's fingers go. Invigorated slightly from receiving an audience, the Bith's stance loosened a bit from respectful and proper to begin moving with the music. A confident note struck up above the crowd, and he deftly transitioned from a ballad to a more upbeat tune. Evaa made a smile at him, and he reciprocated with a fluorish. As far as Coruscanti buskers went, he wasn't the worst she'd heard; not bad.
The final turnaround to the tune came, and the Bith ended it with a tricky run that he only slightly stumbled on. Evaa clapped politely, grinned; the musician bowed. He had the horn's case set out in front of him in hopes of tips, only populated now with a couple lonely credit chips, more than likely placed there by the Bith himself in suggestion. Evaa reached into her pocket and took out a single chip, her sole remaining one containing only two or three credits plus some change, and dropped it into the case. The Bith made a thanks in his native language; before he could begin another tune, Evaa made a suggestive step forward, inviting conversation, and gestured, an admiring look of interest on her face. After a moment, he returned the gesture.
"That was great. It's good to have some upbeat music down here." She almost croaked that first sentence, her vocal cords rough with disuse, but recovered quickly and slid into a friendly conversational tone. She reached out her hand to shake his, and the Bith obliged, dual opposing digits wrapping around her small, calloused hand.
"Thank you, thank you," he replied in inhuman tones. He withdrew his hand and once again placed it on the kloo horn, fingering a scale out absentmindedly.
"I heard you playing that Yo Snootles tune and I had to come over. She's one of my favorites."
"Yes! Her version of that tune is seminal, if I may say so. I'm glad you enjoyed."
"I did, very much. You know, I play the kloo, a bit, on and off, which is why I was impressed to see another player."
"Oh really?" he delightedly replied, the sensory folds above the small hole in his face that could be called a "mouth" moving perhaps in what could be his species's equivalent of a smile. "Always wonderful to meet another admirer of the instrument."
"Do you play much around here?"
The Bith looked down forlornly at his horn, placing his fingers wistfully into position in a lower octave. "Unfortunately, no. I just recently moved to Coruscant from Alderaan, where I attended the Aldera School of Music... housing prices are high there, you know..."
Evaa listened politely, nodding her head at key points, as after some verbal nudging the Bith launched into a description of the sorry state of the music scene on Coruscant and his issues paying off his student loans. Evaa casually eyed the kloo horn as she shifted to an open, amiable stance, mirroring slightly the rambling musician's body language. As she gently urged him into an account on his upbringing on Clak'dor VII listening to the kloo horn greats and attempting to emulate them on an old horn that had once belonged to his grandfather, she glanced over at a second case sitting on the rusty bench behind them.
"... and I was able to purchase this beauty, my first real horn, a few years ago... thankfully just before the Relapse."
Eva nodded, meeting his huge glassy black eyes. "So that's the only horn you own?" she asked, coolly shifting her feet to press her weight on her left leg, head calked slightly to the side.
"Oh, no," the Bith responded. "A musician would be remiss not to have a backup, even with such a well-functioning specimen as this one..." He fondly clicked a few pegs on the horn in his hands, then continued. "No, I have another - in fact, it is my old one, my grandfather's, refurbished of course. I have it here with me." He turned and gestured to the long durasteel case on the bench behind him.
"Well, no way," Evaa remarked, inflecting laughter into the words and grinning. "It still plays?"
"Better than ever before," he declared, folds again flexing.
"I don't believe it. You should play a tune on it."
"A fine idea." He bent down to place his current horn in its respective case - hesitating visibly for a brief moment, before scooping up the meager credits inside and carefully placing the horn in their place, closing and locking in a process that seemed well-rehearsed. He turned to walk over to his other horn. Deftly, Evaa began to reach nonchalantly down for the case, preparing herself to vanish into the crowd -
- before something slammed heavily into her left shoulder, nearly knocking her to the permacrete road, if not for a vice-like grip locking onto her forearm, twisting her away from whomever its owner was and back on her feet in a rather painful manner that paid no respect to the intended range of motion of the limb. The aggressor shoved her away from the busker's stake-out as another hand clamped around her right arm. Evaa made a weak stab at escape, but her left shoulder, arm now contorted painfully behind her back, spiked with pain, threatening to dislocate should she attempt any further getaways. Helpless, she submitted herself, hoping that if this was a mugging, they wouldn't have the guts to kill her when they realized she had nothing.
In short order she was escorted into the nearby alley and shoved roughly against the wall. The impact knocked the air out of her chest and she let out an involuntary "oof" as a womp rat that had been rummaging through the adjacent building's trash collector skittered away to hide a safe distance away behind a pile of liquor bottles, frightened by this intrusion upon its habitat. She almost slumped to the ground, but reminded herself that that wouldn't be a very advantageous position should an opening arrive to escape. She decided to adopt a cornered appearance nonetheless and make it appear she was at their mercy. If there was one thing she'd learned in her years of living in the Coruscant underworld, it was that playing helpless was one of the best tactics you could employ in a confrontation with other lowlife; they loved feeling in control, having another being entirely at their mercy. It was a psychological thirst for most of them, and serving it to them got them as drunk on power as a Sullustan on Corellian whiskey. Drunk - and stupid.
Putting on a frightened face, Evaa turned around.
Oh.
Flanked on either side by a couple of his buddies was Pino, muscled arms bared, malicious smile on his face, lekku folded rascal-style across his shoulders. Evaa's jaw clenched as a vortex of emotions swept across her internal landscape. Viscous hatred was the only one she was willing to acknowledge at the moment. The rest were either confusing or otherwise distracting or useless. Externally, she immediately dropped her pretense of skittishness and straightened herself defiantly, crossing her arms to mirror Pino's lekku. She looked straight into his blue eyes that matched remarkably to his blemishless baby blue skin. She knew what was going on right now, and unlike any other common scum trying to rob her of credits, she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of being in control of her; she'd rather be robbed any day.
"Well look at the fine creature I've run into skulking around the lower levels," Pino proclaimed smugly. "Hey there babe." The final word rang disproportionately to the rest of those in the sentence through the dark dirty alleyway, bouncing off the durasteel walls back and forth in a maddening cacophony - or maybe that was just Evaa. She almost flinched, but perseverantly maintained an unfettered mask. She didn't respond.
Pino stepped forward with a surly gait, maintaining uncomfortable eye contact with those blue eyes, before breaking to make a savoring sweep up and down her body. Evaa felt exposed and uncomfortably vulnerable in the gaze. "Looks like your day-to-day routine hasn't changed. Am I right to guess that you were about to steal that poor Bith's horn?" Evaa didn't answer, glaring. "Pretty scummy, wouldn't you say?" He smirked charmingly.
A string snapped that had been hanging on only by a thread before, one that had been plucked far too many times. She snorted, a red mist forming around the edge of her vision, but trying to keep composure. That snort was louder than she intended. A glob of phlegm had almost dislodged from her nose. "And what about you, Pino? Running errands for the Mynocks is any better? Last time I checked, they had no problem stealing." Evaa glanced down at the waists of the three men in front of her. Surely enough, they were all three armed with (albeit cheap and probably old knock-off brand) blasters, no doubt obtained from the lower city gangs they ran with, chief among them of course the Mynocks, who in turn had undoubtedly attained the armaments through all manner of illicit methods. In strict technicality, blasters were illegal without license throughout Coruscant and most Core worlds, but in the current times those laws might as well be nonexistent for all the enforcement the Republic enacted of them. Of course they had no licenses. Neither had Evaa, when she had owned one.
Pino scowled mockingly and crossed his arms. "No, that's not the same, darling. The Mynocks have something called honor, you must not have heard of it; they don't steal from just any poor sod on the street. They steal from the Nexus, or the Republic. People who deserve it."
Evaa rolled her eyes. Honor. What did that mean to a man like Pino or the other lowlife in the Mynocks? Or to anyone who lived below the surface? The underworld stripped you of dignity the moment you entered; the act was a reversion to the primitive state of survival by any means necessary. It was a state devoid of "honor", an area where the social contract had been shredded to ribbons and its previous signers were bound to nothing. They owed society nil - that was why it was falling apart at the seams.
Pino did not take kindly to the petulant expression and his false charm vanished to be replaced by subtly bared white teeth. "Besides. We spend the proceeds wisely. We... invest. We don't burn it on more death sticks like some loser junkie."
Evaa's nostrils flared and the red mist expanded into a scarlet film over her entire field of vision. It was bad enough that Pino had been the one to first introduce her to the drugs, almost two revolutions ago now, and been the one to nurture her addiction from a recreational activity to the beginnings of a full-blown dependency. It was also infuriating enough that he had used it to manipulate her into all manner of depravity, the depths of which still caused her to shudder in recollection on long sleepless nights of reflection. Now he was mocking her for it. As if, if not for his Twi'lek physiology, well known for its resistance to poisons, he wouldn't be in the same situation as her right now.
Evaa's fist hurled for only a split second before her wrist was caught by the leathery hand of Pino's Weequay buddy and she was slammed back into the wall behind her. The back of her head met with an audible, sickening smack, and stars flew before Evaa's eyes. She dazedly stumbled and almost slumped against the wall once again before the other thug grabbed her by the shirt and propped her up. The soles of her feet lifted off the ground and she struggled on the tips of her toes to maintain contact with the permacrete. She instinctually fought back with a grunt, shoving her knees up towards the Human's torso. They met hard muscle with little more than a muffled thud, but she desperately continued, cursing violently at Pino, the thugs, the cruelty of Coruscant for its untimely convergence of her with relics of her past, until the unmistakable cold metal of the barrel's end of a blaster pistol pressed itself against her now-bared belly. A chill spread from the point of contact throughout her body, freezing her to near-paralysis. She surrendered. Fear mounted inside her, replacing rage with naked dread. Drug-hazed memories flashed in her mind in a hellish deja vu. Animalistic panic rose in her chest, and it took all her willpower not to scream - not that any passerby would likely be willing to help. Her head throbbed; her vision was blurred. He was in full control now, like he had been before.
Unabashed, Pino continued. "Which brings me to something I've been meaning to have a little talk with you about. You were planning to pay me back for all the things you took from my apartment when you ran off, right? I mean, my sugar-baby wouldn't steal from me, would she?" His warm breath wafted across her face now, and Evaa's warped vision filled with a distinct baby blue, flashes of perfect white obtruding every now and again as the words tumbled down her neck. Evaa shuddered - a confused shudder, as something buried deep inside her insidiously fluttered in her stomach, mingling with the rest of its current contents in a sickening concoction that was many times as unbearable as before. A familiar scent of Rylothian root-spice filled her nose. He had always smelled good - one thing he prided himself on was his hygiene, it was the shred of decency that he held onto like others in the underworld clutched at their own little manifestations of dignity as if they were lifelines to the surface world...
"Who am I kidding? You wouldn't have a single decicredit on you. I'd bet you - well, I'd reckon it, anyway." A white crescent gleamed against the blue background like a young moon in a daylight sky. "Well, there's other forms of currency, you know..." A smooth hand slipped under her shirt. Eva tried to recoil, sucking in her stomach, but the hand continued travelling, sliding, up her torso, towards her racing and palpitating heart and on a trajectory to continue beyond. "You've used it to pay off loans from me before, remember? Well, I think it's time to collect on interest. You in on payday, boys?"
Blue flashed. Evaa slammed her eyes shut with a violent flinch - but the visual cue she'd taken for an impending strike had been accompanied by a sound like a speeder revving at a high gear. The cold metal against her belly suddenly vanished after a brief flash of heat - but not a shot, she was unharmed. Evaa gasped. After a confused second, this was followed by cries from the thugs around her, and bewildered blurs of movement. The hand gripping her shirt quickly released, and she plummeted to the ground unprepared and crumpled to the alley floor in a pathetic ragdoll. Disorienting commotion ensued around her. More revving speeder noises, like an army of swoop gang racers, more shouts. A blaster fired; Evaa, suddenly remembering herself with the startle of that ingrained and internalized noise of danger, threw herself in almost pure reflex front-first to the side and covered the back of her head with her hands. Several more engine-like emissions, followed by pained shouts and curses. Two more bolts released, then there was a slam of hard organic matter on metal infrastructure. A groan; then relative silence, laying bare a low, flat hum of energy for several seconds. Evaa laid still, heart still pounding, head racing. Her dazed and battered mind scrambled to come up with an explanation; the Nexus must have come to run down members of the Mynocks in a drive-by. This was not a particulary large improvement to the situation. The Nexus did not have a friendly disposition towards her, to put it mildly. She was... somewhat notorious in the realm of gang politics, despite her best efforts to extract herself from the muddle since she had left Pino. She almost got up and ran, but as she turned her eyes upwards, her vision was still blurred, she was still dizzy, and could probably barely walk, let alone run. She would have crawled, but that wouldn't have gotten her far enough to matter. The hum of energy was silenced by a whoosh and rushed footsteps - in her direction. Evaa resigned herself to her fate - just as bad or worse - and rolled herself over to at least look her new torturer or executioner or captor or otherwise in the eye - though she wouldn't even be able to distinguish it in her current state.
A shadow loomed over her. It grew larger as the figure knelt before her, an amalgamation of earthy brown and cream and pinkish-tan shades, not disrupted throughout by telltale blurbs indicating the usual patches or mismatched protective or utility attire of a gang member. This Nexu had a keener sense of fashion than any she had encountered before, and apparently the money to sate it. As he knelt, the figure's head became silhouetted by the mocking semblace of a sun that was the flood of natural sunlight let down to this level by the massive sinkhole-esque ventilation shaft and ship portal hanging far above the massive man-made cavern that was this sector of the mid levels - known colloquially to underword denizens as one of the many "drains" on Coruscant; while they were intended to provide an escape upwards for gases and fumes and hot air from factories or otherwise below (and, secondarily, a means for ships to travel below the surface to drop off cargo or deliver passengers), it often seemed that their primary function was to flush the poor and undesirable down from the surface into the sewers that were the lower levels, as they were the front doors into the Underworld to most.
"Are you alright?" A youthful male voice emanated from above her. Gently.
The words didn't register in Evaa's brain for several seconds. She almost didn't hear the softly-uttered phrase beyond the extant buzzing in her head and the pounding in her ears. She feebly grasped them as they began to slip away from her, puzzledly studied them, and decided that she must have misheard. "What?" she queried, squinting, hoping maybe she could get a better look to see if he was joking.
"I said are you alright?" he persisted. The blurb of his hand wandered forward, seemingly intending to grasp her shoulder, but stopped hesitantly, and laid itself onto the ground next to her head almost gingerly.
Evaa squinted hard several more times, still too vexed and wary to respond. Slowly, her vision began to return. The figure before her started to materialize like a hologram transmission decrypting its data. The horns were the first to become readily apparent; small bony nubs protruding from a bald head, together forming a "V" shape with a vertex an inch above a naked but strong warrior's brow that was currently arranged into an expression of consternation. Two more stubby spikes extended barely a centimeter outwards from each of his temples. They framed a young pink-tan face, probably teenaged, and missing the ornate web of thin, meticulously patterned tatoos that were common to his species. It had a structure that could become fearsome in a few years' time, but at the moment seemed slightly naive and out of place in the same field of view as its current surroundings. The clothing she had noted earlier was a set of simple earthy-colored cloak and robes, indeed well-washed and respectable, and draped around a lank, lean build. His left forearm rested on his knee, and in his hand was grasped a steely metal cylinder, hollow at the tip.
Evaa's shellshocked brain thawed out and put the pieces together.
"Uh, yeah," she finally replied, backpedalling on her hands and feet and hurriedly sitting up, before a vignette of black licked at her vision and her head pulsed excruciatingly, and a dizziness forced her back to rest on her elbows.
"Whoa, hey, don't get up too fast," the Jedi quickly advised. As Evaa reluctantly closed her eyes in a gambit to give her fried senses a brief rest, she heard him rustle back next to her. She felt anxiety at his presence, a response conditioned into her from many years of dodging authorities. She knew her appearance betrayed her gratuitous drug use. It was not a secret that was easily kept even from visual contact; death stick usage had a distinct toll on one's body that was noticed easily by anyone with even a passing familiarity with junkies. It was not commonly a problem anywhere below surface or upper levels because use was so omnipresent and users so common that most had learned not to care, and the Bith had been easy to fool because he was a new resident. But when police were down here, on a drug or brothel bust or just bored and brave enough to make the venture, it was not a good idea to make your face visible to them, because identifying junkies and taking them into custody was a simple matter of glancing and gunning them down on stun setting - or sometimes not even with the decency to switch to a non-lethal position. Evaa wondered if a lightsaber had a "stun" setting. From the brief glance she'd gotten at the incapacitated thugs strewn about the alleyway around them, with still-glowing cauterized energy wounds on the arms, legs, and other extremities of the three, as well as a gaping orange gash dividing Pino's chest diagonally into two new sections, she guessed that the answer was no.
As she laid agitatedly, a pit in her stomach erupted into a sickening nausea. Her insides spasmed and she turned over and dry-retched in several intense bouts that felt as if she was about to puke her intestines onto the permacrete. There was nothing inside besides her guts to make its way out, so the ground remained dry save for a drop of cold sweat that was thrown from her nose with one of the body-shaking heaves to splatter next to a cluster of womp rat droppings. A few more dripped down to join it as she waited impatiently for the episode to subside. The Jedi watched the ordeal in silence, apparently patiently waiting for - what? For her to submit so he could take her in? For her to die so he could provide another cheap cadaver to the University of Sanbra? Why didn't he just run her through? Evaa stared at the ground miserably, deep breaths now wracking her torso in place of gastrointestinal distress. This whole day had been a disaster. She should have just overdosed the night before.
The Jedi said something softly. Evaa didn't hear over the ringing in her ears, and wasn't interested in conversation enough to beg him to repeat himself. A moment passed, in which she quietly studied the rat droppings before her, and then he cleared his throat and, with an edge of uncertainty, repeated himself slightly louder. "Should I call you an ambulance?" What? Did he want her to die in the hospital so her corpse could be more conveniently cleaned up? Did he think the doctors would give him a royalty if he brought in another patient they could suck dry with exorbidant fees? Did he really think she had any money to pay?
"No," Evaa replied flatly.
"Are you sure? Your head got knocked pretty -"
"No," Evaa reiterated, a bit louder this time, now almost annoyed that he was so insistent on prolonging her suffering. So he had witnessed the whole thing. How long had he waited watching the ordeal? Enough to savor some of it for his own twisted pleasure? Evaa wondered despondently if she would be a decent cadaver for University researchers to study the effects of death stick addiction on. She'd heard stories, urban legends, about students being assigned by professors to retrieve fresh junkie corpses from the alleys and squats of the Underworld - some about them quietly killing a helpless live one when they rang up dry in their search but knew the exam was worth half of their final grade. Did the Jedi Temple have a class like that? Was she just a corpse in the eyes of this kid, one that would let him pass Jedi School?
The Jedi didn't reply and continued to watch her silently, shifting to sit in a criss-crossed position. Evaa felt almost as uncomfortable under his gaze as she had under Pino's. She righted herself, slowly this time, and while there was a bout of dizziness and an unpleasant sensation of blood draining from her head, she was able to make it now without nearly passing out. Avoiding the Jedi's imploring eyes, she glanced again around the alleyway. The two thugs lay thoroughly incapacitated, the Weequay spread-eagle on the ground and the Human slumped against an alley wall perfectly aligned a few feet under a dent in the rusty durasteel, head drooping to the side, blood dripping from the back of his balded cranium to mix on his sleeveless shirt with drool dribbling from his wide-open and loudly breathing mouth. Their blasters each lay with barrels neatly severed near them. As she beheld the sight, she heard the Weequay moan in pain and he rolled over onto his side to reveal, slumped across from the Human, Pino, his cross-sectioned chest motionless and once-lively blue eyes open on a smooth blue face now permanently stuck in a ghastly expression of shock. Evaa felt a lurch inside her at the sight; not another gastric reflex, but something else. And not from the sight of a corpse. No, dead bodies were a... common occurence in Evaa's life. It was from the sight of Pino's corpse.
The Jedi must have caught her staring; he craned his head behind him to follow the trajectory of her gawk, before quickly looking away to place his gaze onto the ground. Evaa also abruptly ceased her inappropriate stare, realizing her face had begun to mirror the corpse's, and jerked her head away. Silence passed, and then the Jedi glanced back over at Evaa and slowly stood up and stepped around the sniveling Weequay to stand before the crumpled Twi'lek body. Evaa looked up. The Jedi knelt before Pino and reached forward with slender fingers to gently push closed his wide-open eyes. Evaa stared quizzically.
"I'm sorry you had to see that," the Jedi intoned in a low voice, still looking down at the corpse. "I shouldn't have killed him. I didn't have to." Evaa blinked. She didn't know what to make of the show of remorse. She had always heard of the Jedi, from malcontent passing jabs in conversation with other lower residents, as uncaring, isolated, and out-of-touch monks who would rather sit philosophizing in their Temple than help the sick and poor and needy below the surface level. They were little more and no better than a branch of the Republic's Judicial department whose only endeavors below their comfortable home were to occasionally arrest drug dealers and gang kingpins who were less of a threat than and only a symptom of the Republic's economic policies. In the century before, and for millennia beyond, they had been proud warriors and the leaders of the Republic, who led its resources into an endless and costly war with a "Sith threat" that never seemed to justify itself and its plunging of Coruscant and the Republic into a Dark Age that was still far from being entirely recovered from. Now, however, they were just cops, elite lackeys of the Republic, even worse than their place in the Galaxy before. It perhaps showed how far the Jedi had fallen from the legends of old that Evaa now felt disbelief at the concept that a Jedi would actually live up to their code. The Jedi had not shown squeamishness towards killing during the Wars, and they did not show grief for the starving masses now, and the cynicism of the lower residents only served to amplify the resentment they felt towards this attitude.
"My Master would kill me," he muttered - not a repositioning of the source of the regret from taking a life to the possibility of a scolding from a teacher, but a remorseful acknowledgement, like a child regretting that he had committed an act his beloved mother had told him, and he knew in his heart, was wrong. The words subtly cast the Jedi in a new light, almost comical if not for the grimness of the situation; he was a child, Evaa realized to herself as if for the first time, regarding his boyish, innocent face in stark contrast to the grotesquerie of the corpse's in front of him. There was also something else there, microexpressions that Evaa had learned to read and always been able to perceive with an unnatural precision betraying an extant fear, like that of someone caught in the floodlights of death for the first time, a sensation Evaa had known long ago but had long since been buried under the deluge of near-death experiences she had lived through in her time. He'd been afraid when he'd killed Pino.
Now the possibility of his being a cadaver collector or murderer seemed silly, and Evaa falteringly dropped the melodrama of the assumptions. Hell, he probably couldn't even tell she was a junkie. Maybe she'd get out of this.
At a loss as to what to say, she sat quietly as the Jedi stood back up, taking a deep breath as he glanced around at the other two thugs. They seemed to be coming to; the Human rolled his head to the opposite shoulder, string of spittle following, and the Weequay moaned once again, cradling a precisely placed slice of an energy wound on his shoulder.
"I guess I should call the police then," he observed.
"No, don't," Evaa implored quickly. Obviously, she didn't want to get entangled in the cumbersome proceedings that accompanied the investigation of a crime scene. The idea of revenge against the thugs in the form of a sentence in prison didn't even hold her attention for half a second; Pino was already dead, and his accomplices had the burden of medical bills to bear, a fate that was not a massive improvement over prison for a lower resident. Besides, calling police was never even something that graced lower residents' minds in the event of an altercation, for clear reasons. "Please," she added as an afterthought, almost stumbling over the word she hadn't said in a long time.
He raised a brow. "Are you -"
Evaa interjected before he could finish once again. "Yes." Exhaustion had begun to wash over her, and she was not in the mood to justify her answer. The Jedi took a long look at her, apparently incredulous at her disinterest in help, but relented reluctantly.
"Is there anything you need?" he asked gently. "Do you need to call your family?" No family. "I can walk you home." No home. The Jedi waited for her to respond with an affirmative to something, to no avail. "Food?" he implored awkwardly in a final bid, a suggestion he didn't seem to think would illicit any more enthusiastic a response than the others. Evaa's stomah panged in ravenous hunger at the suggestion, outside of her volition, despite the fact that it had just recently attempted to purge itself of its nonexistent contents. She tried to remember the last time she'd eaten, and couldn't. The only substances she had consumed in the last few days were death sticks, the nutritional and caloric contents of which were, needless to say, emptier than air. It wasn't that she wanted to take him up on his offer; the fiber of her being still groaned to be out of the presence of authority, however young and clueless. She wrestled with her angry stomach, and failed, as it pinned her brain down and forced it to accept the Jedi's offer.
"...Okay," Evaa reluctantly answered, bowing to the needs of her body. At least free food was an offer that was wise to take up in her current financial state.
The Jedi betrayed his surprise and slight relief for a moment. "Alright, then. I, uh, walked past a place earlier."
Evaa slowly began to stand up. The Jedi quickly stepped over to provide help as Evaa's head pounded with a surge of liquid pain. Her whole body was sore; dizziness still dominated her world, and she was forced to accept his arm lest she fall back over. Then, after a moment of regaining her bearings, she shrugged off his arm, and, with a glance that relayed clearly but unintentionally his befuddlement over this strange damsel in distress he had found himself on a date with, the Jedi shuffled to the mouth of the alley, with a glance back to make sure she was following and hadn't fallen over. Evaa nodded, having followed a few meters behind him with some shaky steps, stepping gingerly over the Weequay thug and almost stumbling as he rolled onto his other side under her, and he pulled up the hood of his robe and walked into the thoroughfare. Evaa hesitated, glancing down at Pino's body next to her, his baby blue skin morphing into an even paler shade almost before her eyes.
"You coming?" the Jedi said softly from behind her, startling Evaa from her despondent reverie of days long past, days that were almost happy to her, that had been forever tarnished by the horrors that had come subsequently. Evaa turned and nodded as the Jedi studied her face again, that look of remorse clouding the young features, as Evaa tried behind a sabacc face to reconcile with her utterly confused self the existence of a man so horrible that she had once actually loved. Then, before peace had been made with herself, like always, they were off, leaving his corpse behind for his lackeys to clean up for them.
They integrated into the bustle and walked, the Jedi keeping a slow pace that earned him irked glances and shoves from impatient tailgaters and glancing behind him often to check on her trailing a few meters behind, and as they did, Evaa heard a familiar voice that had been stored in her short-term memory.
"There you are! Are you alright?" The Bith had waded through the crowd to meet her as they had trailed past his busking spot. Evaa gave a weak smile at him to placate his concern, underneath the usual facade annoyed at the delay.
"Yes, fine," she replied curtly but sickly-sweet polite.
"Thank the Force. And of course, thank you, sir, for going after her; whatever you did, I'm glad this woman is alright. Those men did not seem friendly." He was speaking to the Jedi, who had turned around to regard the Bith.
"Thanks for raising the alarm," the Jedi responded from under his hood, his words coming from a different place now, one of practiced authority and respectfulness. "Because of you she's safe now." He reached out to deposit a few credit chips into the Bith's hand.
"Oh, no, sir," the Bith intoned, pushing the currency away. "I'm just happy to do my civic duty. I must return to my playing; I see you two are off as well. Here's my business card, miss," he offered forward a datachip embedded with his likeness in a smooth pose with his kloo horn, wearing the same outfit he was in now, accompanied by zanily colored Aurebesh lettering. "I hope to see you again. Take care, and keep blowing." He winked, an awkward and strange expression on his Bith face that clearly wasn't endemic to his species and he must have learned and replicated from interaction with humanoids, then turned away to return to his post. Evaa shoved the datachip into her pocket, watching him pick his way through the crowd, getting jostled by impatient pedestrians far larger than him. His colossal cranium vanished.
"You play the Kloo horn?" the Jedi asked, in a tentative jab at small talk.
"No," Evaa replied, eyes still fixed absentmindedly at the spot where the Bith had disappeared into the crowd. "I don't play any instrument."
After her refusal to elaborate, the Jedi blankly turned, and they continued their trek towards nourishment.
