By the Light of a Dying Star
Chapter 2: Coruscant Nights
Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars
"Tell me again why you're volunteering for another three years of study?"
Isharia sighed and looked over at her companion, "Because I want to, Shayla. Contrary to your opinion, some of us like to study."
"I don't get it though, you could work at any medical centre in the galaxy with your credentials, why stick around here?"
"Because Dr Ranil went off to study some obscure lifeform in the Outer Rim, so I'm the only one in the department qualified and knowledgeable enough to liaise with the Temple."
Shayla scrunched her pink nose in disgust, "So you're stuck here because Dr Hot went off to 'commune with nature' and left you to play nice with a bunch of sexually repressed killjoys? Wow, what a wonderful man."
Isharia rolled her eyes and took a sip of her drink, savouring tart flavour and the sharp burn of the alcohol, "They're not that bad, Shayla. Honestly, the way you talk about them you'd think that all the Jedi do is recite the code and contemplate in silence."
The Zeltron snorted delicately, "Maybe not, but you'd never see one here," she said, sweeping her hand out to indicate their present location.
Isharia flicked her eyes from side to side to take in the psychedelic lights and messy crowd of sweaty, undulating bodies around them and murmured into her drink, "I wonder why I'm here."
Shayla sighed exasperatedly and raised her lilac eyes to the heavens before rising from her seat, "If you're going to be such a Debbie Downer, I'm leaving you here and dancing." She turned to Isharia and pointed a perfectly manicured gold nail at her, "Don't try to leave without me," before flicking her voluminous blue locks and sauntering off, sending a wave of powerful pheromones in her wake.
Isharia watched from her place at the bar as Shayla drew a crowd of helpless males in around her like flies to honey, each one attracted to the unique chemical composition of her allure. She and Shayla had met at Fresher's Week at the university, with the Zeltron electing herself as the clueless offworlder's tour guide around the best party spots Coruscant had to offer. Isharia herself had been too enthralled by the vibrant fuchsia of her skin and royal blue of her tresses to resist too much, having never seen such colours on anyone before. This had led to her spending the week stumbling from club to club and bar to bar in a blinding haze of flashing lights and hypnotic bass, barely given any time to rest in Shayla's relentless quest for fun.
They had bonded that week over shared hangovers, and when Isharia KO'd a handsy Falleen that wouldn't take no for an answer, they became friends for life. For the next three years Shayla had made it her mission to drag Isharia away from the 'monotonous black hole of academia' to the real world (because people are having fun out there, Isharia and you're gunna ossify in here). Even after Shayla had graduated with a degree in Journalism and Interplanetary Relations, she still turned up every so often to pull her out of the lab and off on some crazy sex-and-alcohol fuelled adventure where Isharia would have to spend the next forty-eight hours playing supervisor to the galaxy's most irresponsible party animal.
She didn't mind. To be honest some of her most treasured memories had come from those insane, merry-making extravaganzas; it had been so completely opposite to Brion that she had willingly gone along to every foam party or ridiculous blind date event. She had felt herself come alive under the kaleidoscopic lights and surrounded by the raw energy and mesmerising presences of strangers, revelling in the feeling of doing something that would probably have her grandmother disown her. And so after seven years of wacky escapades and Shayla's usual trail of jealous girlfriends, Isharia could happily say that Shayla was her best friend.
"Which brings me to now," she thought wryly.
Shayla had decided that in order to properly celebrate Isharia's PhD research proposal being accepted by the university board, they needed to go out. Why, Isharia had no idea. She was perfectly content with staying at home in her apartment planning what she was going to say to the Temple representative who was coming to meet with her on Primeday. If it went ahead, her research would touch on a rather delicate subject for the Jedi and would require their full co-operation. But, as with all things, Shayla was able to wash away her plans like a Jabiim rainstorm.
They had ended up at a club located on one of the less respectable levels of the Entertainment District. Here the clientele waswere less the rambunctious children of Coruscant's elite and more the shadier folk that occupied the underworld; a collection of upper-end smugglers and drug dealers looking to sell to the more intrepid surface dwellers that occasionally made their way down here. Already the two of them had been offered at least four different variations of spice and three varying brands of death sticks. Once again, this escapade was due to Shayla's insistence on being 'adventurous'(Come on, Isharia, you only live once! We'll be fine) and Isharia had yet to see the positive side.
The club was large, dark and moist from the sweat of at least three-hundred drug-addled, euphoric dancers. From every corner speakers blared out a mesmeric trance track full of melodic phrases and mind-bending tempos that wouldn't have sounded out of place at some Zeltron orgy (which was probably why Shayla liked it) and the flashing lights pulsed between varying shades of neon and hypnotic strobe effects. Away from the dancefloor, the club was equipped with a range of suspicious looking darkened alcoves where the more dubious individuals could conduct their business away from the writhing mass of bodies. Dotted in amongst the throng were several raised podiums, each one occupied by scantily clad Twi'lek dancers, their graceful movements' one part sensual and two parts erotic.
The bar Isharia was sat at was tucked away on the left side of the club; it was superficially clean, but if one were to look closely at the counter, the stains and residues left by countless inebriated patrons could be found. The barman was a bored looking Nautolan with smooth blue skin and bulbous dark eyes; every so often his gaze would drift over to the couple dry-humping against the wall before pulling a long-suffering expression and going back cleaning stained glasses with a dirty rag.
Isharia's face twisted into a grimace, 'Why do I let Shayla bring me to these places?' she thought, looking around the club with disgust, 'If she wanted to go out, Club Kasakar would've been fine. It would have been affordable and I wouldn't have to worry about someone kidnapping one of us.' She eyed the room with distain, 'This place is disgusting.'
Isharia finished the rest of her drink and placed the glass down on the scratched bar top, trying not to look too closely at the marks left on the surface. She caught the eye of the barman and signalled for him to come over with a slight tilt of the head. The Nautolan shoved the glass he was cleaning on an overhead shelf and draped the cleaning rag over one shoulder before strolling over, his fourteen head-tresses swaying with each step.
"What'll it be, missMiss?" he asked in drawled, lazy tones.
"Hoth daiquiri, please," Isharia practically shouted, struggling to get her voice heard over the pounding beat.
"That'll be nine creds," he replied
Both Isharia's eyebrows went up in shock, 'Nine creds in a dump like this!? What a rip off!'!" she thought incredulously. She reached into her purple clutch bag to find her purse and reluctantly pulled out the correct amount of coins before depositing them on the counter. The barman's eyes drifted over them before he nodded slightly, scooped them up with one hand and wandered over to the row of multi-coloured bottles behind him to begin mixing the drink.
Isharia sighed and sat back on her stool to wait, gaze scanning the crowd of revellers in an attempt to pick out Shayla's distinctive form. The crowd was a mixture of sentient races, from Dugs to Rodians to Humans. It was quite a feast for the eyes, one Isharia was drinking in eagerly and secretly savouring. After a childhood spent on Brion with its strict No-Entry-No-Exit policy, the sheer number and diversity of sentient species floating around the galaxy was quite the culture shock. She had spent nearly three months after finally leaving Brion just trawling through the HoloNet, desperately trying to research each one. It was fascinating. She had never in her wildest dreams imagined there was so much life out there, after growing up solely exposed to Brionians (Humans (Brionian Humans at that, and they were rather bland) being exposed to an entire galaxy full of extraordinary and varied lifeforms was mind-blowing.
Isharia felt a shiver work its way up her spine, indicating someone was watching her and slid her eyes over the other patrons of the bar. They settled on a dirty looking human male dressed from head to toe in a drab, dark brown. His lank hair hung in limp clumps over his face and his sunken dark eyes topped deep, shadowed crevices in the tell-tale signs of a long- term spice addict. His hungry gaze roved up her form, undressing her in his mind and his fingers twitched in nervous, claw like motions, reaching for a fix he did not have.
She sighed internally and tensed the muscles in her face to form the stone cold Brionian impassivity she had mastered over years. Her eyes hardened until they resembled jagged shards of black ice and she fixed the man with a form of her grandmother's patented death glare: a mixture of icy superiority, complete distain and utter apathy. When the man's eyes met hers, he paled slightly under the force of the look and shrunk back muttering to himself. To discourage him further, she reached out with the Force and nudged against the rank slime of his mind, distorted and made ugly by drug induced psychosis and a life filled with the worst sort of crime. She focused on her anger and sent a thin tendril of malicious energythe dark side into his presence, feeling as it slithered its way into the recesses of his consciousness. The man went even whiter and fixed her with a look of utmost fear before scrambling up off his seat and hurrying off into the crowd.
Isharia relaxed her face and scowled, 'Good riddance,' she thought with revulsion. She could feel in his mind what he wanted to do to her and Shayla, what he had done to many other girls, 'Maybe that'll put him off somewhat.' His mind had been absolutely filthy, something that was sadly becoming more common as of late, Isharia could barely go a day now without sensing the taint of unbalanced Dark Sidedark side energy sinking toxic claws into the world around her. A shroud had been steadily enveloping the Force in the last few years, a mammoth construct of poisonous fibres that weaved gossamer webs of compulsion over the city planet. It was faint and almost imperceptible to any Force users who didn't already know it was there, Isharia herself only felt it because she had previous experience with such things.
What confused her however, was that still not one Jedi seemed to have noticed. Out of the thousands of Jedi that frequently occupied the Temple, not a single individual of that learned Order had ever picked up on the ever-darkening hue of the Force.
'Their unbalanced use of the LightKim'ar must cloud their sight,' Isharia mused, watching as the barman came back over with her drink.
"One Hoth daiquiri," he said, placing the glass down in front of her.
"Thanks."
She picked up the drink and took a sip, enjoying the citrus flavour of the Muja fruit and the bite of the Corellian rum. 'I bet unbalanced DarkIshk'ar users experience the same when the Light Sidelight side is in ascendance.' She grimaced, 'Although, I suppose the whole thing is inevitable considering the Light Sidelight side has been the sole power in the galaxy for the last thousand years, the balance would have to correct itself at some point.' She took in the club from over the rim her glass, 'I just really hope it's not in my lifetime.'
She thought back to her lessons on the Force growing up, the academy teachers had had the unfortunate gift of making even the most interesting of topics tedious and dull. One thing they were quite clear on though was that the balance must always be preserved, whether that was on a small scale of personal Force use, or a large scale of entire planets or the galaxy as a whole. However, after spending a fair amount of time at the Temple over the years with Dr Ranil and his team, she couldn't say that she was all that convinced that Light Sidelight side domination was such a bad thing: the atmosphere at the Temple was certainly a whole lot better than anywhere on Brion.
She sighed, 'Well not much I can do about it anyway, unless I want to pull attention to my training on Brion,' her face morphed into a grimace, 'now that would be bad.'
Isharia sank down on her stool and relaxed, taking slow sips from her beverage and trying to enjoy the music. She expanded her senses and felt the raw, primal joy of the dance fill her mind, taking in the universal feeling of happiness that came from moving one's body to a beat as it radiated off the crowd. In settings such as this, individual minds were nearly impossible to distinguish outside of deep meditation, as all were joined in an overarching feeling of ecstasy.
She jolted as she felt a tap on her shoulder, whipping her head round she saw the Nautolan barman leaning over the counter, the tendrils on his head falling over his form.
"Is that your friend?" he asked, gesturing with his head to indicate the person he was referring to.
Isharia turned around and scanned the crowd in the direction he had pointed out. Her eyes widened in shock as she took in a dazed looking Shayla in her neon yellow and green dress surrounded by a group of grinning male Weequay. She felt fury rise up in her a she slammed her drink down on the bar top, hastily grabbed her bag and began using the Force to clear her mind ofaccelerate flushing the alcohol from her bloodstream. "Thanks," she tossed over her shoulder to the barman who shrugged in reply before storming over to Shayla.
When she reached Shayla, she grabbed her by the arm and started to pull her toward the exit, "We are leaving!" she hissed in Shayla's ear.
Shayla turned her head around to face Isharia with exaggerated slowness, the pupils of her lavender eyes blown wide, "Whaaaat? Noooooo! I don't wanna leave yet!" she slurred, trying to keep herself balanced in her neck-breaker stilettos, her hands shaking. "Yuuur sucha, a, a bore, Isharia! It's because of the Jedi, isn't it? Don't make me leeeeeave!" she whined, her speech garbled and indistinct.
One of the Weequay spoke up, his face set in a smirk and his beady eyes fixed on Shayla's body, "Yeah, Isharia, don't make her leave. We were just getting started." His gaze flicked to her and trailed down her form, "Unless you'd like to join?"
The other Weequay sniggered and Isharia turned her furious glare on the one that had spoken, "No thank you. The two of us will be going now," she ground out through clenched teeth, half supporting, half dragging Shayla toward the doors at the back.
The Weequay raised his hands in defence, "Cool it down, sister, I'll take that as a no then,"
"I am not your sister!" she spat, glaring.
"Bitch," he muttered.
Isharia shot them one last venomous look and bodily hauled Shayla away. "Nooooo, Isharia! We were having fun!" came Shayla's voice, her words falling together in a jumbled mess.
"What the kriff happened to you, Shayla? You were fine ten minutes ago!" Isharia growled angrily as they stumbled outside, the stale air of the Coruscanti underworld greeting their nostrils.
Shayla giggled, her eyes flickering randomly in every direction, obviously barely paying attention, "They were niiiice, Tak even offered me some of his drink!" she pouted, licking her lips and twisting her jaw, "Unlike you, why are we leaving!"
Isharia abruptly stopped, causing Shayla to bump into her and almost go flying, Isharia caught her on reflex. "You. Accepted. Some of his drink!" Isharia hissed, baring her teeth and bringing her face close to Shayla's. "Were you dropped on your head as a child!?" she snarled "Or are you just that mentally deficient!?"
Shayla scowled, gaze directed up in the opposite direction "You're being meeean, stop it, Isharia, I thought we were frieeends."
Isharia stood back and took in her friend's twitching hands, vacant, dilated eyes and the constant clenching and unclenching of her jaw and sighed angrily. She pulled Shayla over to the side of the path and unceremoniously dumped her on the ground. "Sit here," she ordered. 'What have I done to deserve this?' shethoughtasshe slid into a crouch in front of her, 'I heard Zeltrons were gullible but this is just ridiculous!'
Isharia cast that from her mind and focused on her dazed friend, trying to remember some of the basic lessons for identifying and treating this sort of thing. 'Rapid, involuntary eye movements,' she thought as she reached over to lift Shayla's eyelid and study the lilac orb, Shayla being too interested in something only she could see in the distance to complain. Isharia grimaced, 'With dilated pupils too.' She then reached over to grab a magenta wrist, flipping it over in her hand a couple of times before taking the pulse, 'Uncontrolled shaking and sweaty palms, along with lower body temperature and increased heart rate.' Isharia dropped her wrist, letting in flop to Shayla's side before bringing her hand up in front of her friend's face and snapping her fingers to grab her attention.
Shayla eyelids closed and opened slowly over her wide pupils in a long slow blink, "Yeeees?" she slurred.
'And finally, slower reaction time and difficulty focusing. Classic glitterstim symptoms.' Isharia exhaled forcefully through her nostrils, "You are kriffing lucky that I'm a doctor and that bartender saw you, you utter karking moron!" she ground out. "Sometimes I feel more like your mother than your friend. You don't accept drinks from strangers, especially this far below the surface!" she reprimanded with the air of someone who'd been over this multiple times.
Isharia stood up and brushed her leather clad legs down before grabbing Shayla by her elbows and hauling her up. "Come on, let's go." She muttered, wrapping one of her friend's arms around her shoulders. Together, they staggered along the road, avoiding festering piles of refuse and the unconscious forms of other party-goers. The air smelt damp and stale and the street was lit with luminescence of multiple fluorescent signs, advertising various bars, clubs and strip joints in blocky aurabesh. Day and night were illusions down here; with the absence of natural light, the clubs were open 24/5 and the city never slept.
Struggling to support the weight of her much taller friend and balance in her heeled boots at the same time, Isharia lurched to a stop. Normally Shayla's weight wouldn't be a problem, she was adapted for the stronger gravity of Brion after all, but Isharia had barely slept in weeks with the stress and was bone tired. She carefully leaned Shayla against the side of a dirty durasteel wall and slumped next to her, eyeing the sign of a restaurant offering twenty-four hour ChandrilanChrandrilan takeaway.
"Why in Sith Hells are you so heavy, Shayla?" Isharia muttered letting her head thump back on the cold steel behind her.
Shayla, who by this point was barely conscious under the drug's effects, mumbled something incoherent and darted her eyes in random patterns around the street.
Isharia looked over at her, 'They must've given her a strong dose for it to take so fast,' she thought worriedly, facial muscles pulled tight with concern. "Good thing you have two livers, otherwise this could've been much worse," she muttered.
Letting the cool durasteel chill her heated skin, Isharia allowed herself to rest for a bit, watching as fellow clubbers jerked and swayed along the paths and speeders flew along narrow underworld skylanes. The buildings around her vibrated with the thumping bass of hundreds of nightclubs and the boisterous shouts of thousands of pleasure seekers filled the air. Despite the fact this was hardly the time to admire the scenery, Isharia couldn't resist marvelling at the feel of it all through the Force.
It was like floating in a sea of euphoria. Excitement and exhilaration constantly rippled in erratic pulses through the Force in the Entertainment District. It was an ambiance unique to the area, with generations upon generations of the capital's young people seeking ecstasy and oblivion within its confines. There were clubs and bars, brothels and bordellos, ranging from those that were no more than disease-ridden hives of scum to the high-class amusements of the super-rich.
Through the Force it was amazing: a potent cocktail of mad satisfaction and blissed mania that swept through Isharia in psychedelic waves. There was a reason Jedi didn't tend to stay too long or travel too deep in the Entertainment District, the buzzed atmosphere was as addictive as any drug to a Force user who wasn't prepared for it. Isharia herself was only able to spend the time she did amongst the emotional high due to many hours spent mentally training herself to resist its seductive call.
She sighed and, as she was wont to do, mentally compared it to Brion.
Brionians were a highly restrained lot, their forbidding demeanour and cold personalities a natural deterrent to any sort of frivolity. On Brion parties were tame, societal affairs where the ambitious used their dagger-sharp minds to mock and scorn in honeyed tones; where alliances were wrought and broken and anyone could be destroyed by a whisper to the right ear. If Coruscant and its Entertainment District was a firework: fast, dynamic and vivacious, Brion was a frozen lake camouflaged by powder snow: soft and innocent on the surface but deadly beneath. It was a place where when the ice cracked and you fell through, the mad scrabbling to recover would leave you bloody and raw.
Even the atmosphere was different, Brionian parties were always set to haunting melodies crooned by eerie layered voices. The tone low and hypnotic, the type that sent chills down your spine. The dances were a far cry from the primal fervour displayed on Coruscant: intricate and precise, every movement of the hand and flick of the eyes specifically chosen to covey a clandestine message. Dances on Brion were whole conversations in themselves, secrets shared during a waltz had sparked and quelled riots, silenced and slaughtered enemies. It was so far removed from the unrestrained wildness of Coruscanti dance clubs that it might as well have been a different galaxy altogether.
'By the Force, I'm glad to be free of that place!' Isharia thought with a small smile as she stared up at the messy labyrinth of interlocking skylanes. For seventeen years Brion had been her prison, chains of spun snowflakes had held her down in a cage of towering ice pillars and emotionless monochrome eyes had pinned her where she kneeled in submission. Leaving had been the best decision she'd ever made. After her parents died there had been nothing holding her to that barren rock and it had taken the better part of nine years to realise it.
She closed her eyes and opened her senses fully to the Force, basking in the grandeur of Coruscant through it. In her mind's eye, she traced the iridescent patchwork of souls stretching off into spiritual infinity and marvelled at the fluctuating fabric of it. She could feel each tiny pinprick flash and ripple as the old sputtered and died and the young burst to life. It was divine. In the weave of it she could see the shades everlasting time, where the Force interacted with the eternality between real and unreal and threw about echoes of all that existed in every moment. It shifted in ethereal rivers, revealing the ghosts of instants where there was no then or now or after, there simply was.
Isharia breathed in deeply, swimming in the wonder of being connected to something so infinite and unknowable. 'This is what it must feel like to be a god,' she thought with reverence. Ever since she had properly sunk into the Force for the first time, she had treated it with a respectful awe, it was everywhere and every moment all at once. All around her the smells and sounds of the seedy underworld street faded into the void as she took in the vast urban sprawl of Coruscant, the trillions of minds shining in a spiritual masterpiece through metaphysical space.
It was large and untameable, each presence battering her mind in a storm of riotous feeling as they all subconsciously clamoured to be heard. That was another difference between Brion and Coruscant. On Brion the fabric of the Force was sedate, sure it was still as mystical and incomprehensible, but the minds of individuals generally tended to drift by passively, brushing at the edge of her mind feather-light but no more. On Coruscant, however, they practically shouted at her in an effort to attract her attention, there was this overarching need to be acknowledged that was absent on Brion.
She stretched out and swept her senses away from the addictive euphoria of the Entertainment District and out to the rigorously ordered Financial District. Here, the presences pulsed and flashed at regular intervals, interlocking and connecting like a spiritual circuit board; the well-ordered minds of the galaxies bankers and brokers driving the economy onwards. Next, she flitted over the Senate. Here the Force swirled and twisted in complex whorls, the ideals and agendas of politicians clashing and reforming, mixing and snaking into something new. Then to the university, where minds sparked erratically with each new inspiration, random and genius at the same time. Finally she wandered over to the Temple, a shining oasis of tranquillity within the chaos of Coruscant, a fixture of the psychic landscape.
Through the Force the city was just as enormous as it was in the physical world, a huge evolving organism in itself. She had never quite gotten over the size of Galactic City, the sight of it glowing with the artificial shine of a trillion lights never ceased to make her breath catch whenever she took a rare trip offworld. It was single-handedly the most amazing place she had ever been, a place of infinite possibilities, somewhere she could be anything she wanted.
Sinking out of her trance she smiled fondly, recalling the first time she had set foot on Coruscant. She had arrived at a spaceport somewhere near the Senate District, fresh off a transport from first the middle-of-nowhere planet she had flown to after leaving Brion. Arrivals had been packed with all manner of species: big, small, tall, short, the works; it had been hard to keep herself from gaping like an idiot at everything she saw.
'At least the scenery was familiar,' she recalled wistfully, 'I can't imagine how much of a stupid tourist I would have looked if I'd turned up somewhere with actual forests like Alderaan.'
Growing up on Brion had given her an advantage in that respect, on the surface, Galactic City was very much alike to any of the six megacities on Brion. With the whole planet being pretty much uninhabitable, the areas under the thermo-reg shields were havens for the entire population. As a result, the skytowers grew higher and higher with each generation and more and more people occupied the limited space. The only thing that stopped the lower levels of Brionian cities from turning into the Coruscanti underworld was probably the intrinsic Brionian appreciation for order and their purely logical attitude towards the law.
'Although there are some places,' Isharia thought darkly, scowling grimly up at where the sky should be, 'I would know.'
Rubbing the bridge of her nose tiredly, she sighed and glanced over at where Shayla stared gormlessly out in the distance, her presence in the Force sluggish and muted due to the drugs in her system. "I guess you'll be sleeping in my spare room again tonight," Isharia informed her unresponsive friend wearily, "I don't trust you to take care of yourself when you're like this." She pulled herself off the side of the building and ran a hand through her hair, mussing the tangled mane of curls further, "Stars, I should probably just let you move in already," she muttered grabbing both of Shayla's arms and hauling her up and over her shoulders.
Isharia carefully manoeuvred the two of them along the street, occasionally stumbling and swaying under Shayla's limp, dead weight. The Zeltron's head lolled around her shoulder, a heavy, bony mass digging into her clavicle as Shayla muttered and murmured in her native tongue, every so often giggling breathily and leaning in to kiss Isharia's neck.
Isharia rolled her eyes. It was amazing how often this situation had been repeated, the legendary Zeltron gullibility working against Shayla and her enthusiasm for anything remotely enjoyable sapping the rest of her good judgement.
She frowned with irritation as Shayla's affectionate kisses got sloppier and she sprawled more insistently of over Isharia's side. Her thick blue hair was shoved up against Isharia's nose as she struggled not to gag at the overwhelming musk of pheromones; she thanked whatever god that was out there that she could use the Force to clear her head.
Zeltron pheromones were powerful things, designed to make the one emitting them more attractive and likeable; coupled with their empathetic abilities and universal appeal they were actually rather formidable. It was probably a good thing that the majority of their species were mainly lazy hedonists, with drive, they could almost certainly do some serious damage to the galaxy at large.
Although, currently Isharia was more concerned about herself rather than the rest of the galaxy. In her deliria, Shayla was projecting the strongest feelings of lust she could muster and with the two of them sharing skin-to-skin contact, Isharia was receiving all of them. It flooded her body with liquid heat and raced down her spine in trails of molten fire. Her pupils had dilated and black eyes grown blacker as the sensation coiled low in her belly and her limbs raced with volatile sparks. It was all she could do to keep herself focused in the moment rather than falling into the alluring feel of it.
She reached out to the Force and used the erratic buzzsoothing waves of the night around herlight side to calm the heated thirst in her blood. As clarity returned to her thoughts she scowled. She couldn't blame her for her natural impulses, it wasn't as if Shayla held any real sort of interest in her best friend, it was more that Isharia was the closest warm body and Zeltrons were -above all things- pleasure seekers.
'Damn those Weequay! Damn them to kriffing Sith hell!' she cursed heatedly, struggling under her friend's gangly limbs to push her away. If Isharia hadn't been there, chances were the group them would have used Shayla's drugged up, overly affectionate state to do with her as they pleased.
And those situations were never pretty.
It wasn't uncommon for unsuspecting party goers to be targeted by filth of the galaxy, using their naivety or delirious states to live out their sick, twisted fantasies. The best that you could hope for was waking up in some strange place with no memory of the events that brought you and aches in places there really shouldn't be. The worst was undoubtedly awakening on the cold steel of a trader ship with an implant stuck in your body on your way to the Outer Rim slave markets.
Most of these cases went by uncared for by the authorities who had written the underworld off as a lost cause, the lower levels were too crime infested over the course of millennia for anything other than all-out war on the underworld to change that. The senate didn't care and the Jedi had more important things to be doing than sorting out the vile stain of the lower levels or breaking up illegal slave rings.
'More important things my arse!' Isharia snorted derisively, 'From what I've seen over the years all most Jedi do is sit on their backsides in their cushy temple while the galaxy and the government grow more stagnant by the day!' she adjusted Shayla's weight and turned off into a filthy, litter strewn side street, 'It's either that or unimportant diplomatic missions to planets that would do well to solve their own karking problems!'
It wasn't that Isharia disliked the Jedi, in fact she rather admired them -despite years of her grandmother'sGrandmothers scathing diatribe- it was just that she believed wholeheartedly that they needed to stop being passive observers and take a more active role in the galaxy.
Eventually they stumbled down the alley where Isharia had hidden her speeder, tucked away down a backstreet to avoid the notice of any shady characters looking to steal it.
It sat gleaming in amongst the rotten piles of refuse that clogged up the alley, its purple finish blending seamlessly with the shadowed corners and looming durasteel walls. The machine was Isharia's pride and joy and had cost a considerable amount of her inheritance filched from Brion to purchase. The Airstreamer K-series was a top of the range model from a reputable Coruscanti company that often supplied speeders for the annual races over on the other side of the planet. Famed for its manoeuvrability and high speeds, it was a rather unnecessary purchase, but she loved it anyway.
She liked to think her speed-demon mother would have approved of it.
The two of them tottered over to it, narrowly avoiding what looked like the putrid remains of a particularly fat rat and making their way over to the passenger side. Isharia leant Shayla against the door, making sure she was unlikely to simply collapse onto the squalid floor and winced slightly at the thought of all the dirty marks that would be left on her perfect paintjob. She carefully made her way to the driver's side, taking caution to avoid stepping in the pools of fetid water that lay stagnant on the ground and dodging litter barely visible in the gloom.
She placed her hand on the side of the door and watched as it lit up where her palm lay and a ring of blue light chased itself around her hand. A few seconds later the blue turned green and small beep and several synchronised clicks indicated her handprint had been accepted and the biometric locks disengaged.
She crept back over to Shayla who was slumped against the side of the speeder, her face pressed up against the roof. 'Urgh, is she drooling on my speeder!?' Isharia scowled, glaring at her dazed friend, who was still giggling softly under her breath. "What am I going to do with you?" she muttered, shaking her head.
Isharia rolled Shayla away from the door and leant down to open it up. "In you go," she murmured, dragging the unresisting Zeltron down into the passenger seat and strapping her in.
Shayla stretched up to nuzzle Isharia's arms, the feeling of lust once again hammering at her mind, "Love you, 'Sharia," Shayla whispered smiling.
"Yeah, yeahYeah," Isharia rolled her eyes, "if you loved me so much you wouldn't bring me to these places," she sighed standing back up and closing the door.
She climbed into her side of the speeder and pressed the start button, watching as the dark interior camecome alive as blue, red and orange light flooded the display. She listened with contentment as the repulsorlift kicked in, lifting the craft up. She carefully shifted the speeder into gear, releasing the handbrake and smiled as the engine purred with pleasure. Glancing once at Shayla, she expertly navigated the speeder out of the confines of the alley and into the narrow underworld lanes.
It wasn't technically legal for her to be flying down here. She didn't have a special license or a government permit to fly anywhere other than the strictly regulated skylanes that crisscrossed the surface. However Isharia had long since learnt that law enforcement had minimal, if any, presence this far down in the Entertainment District and there was no real risk of being questioned.
They drifted along slowly, the neon glow of the passing clubs and bars reflected in the shine of their eyes. Shayla sat staring out of the window in wonderment, her emotions fluctuating wildly between innocent awe and giddy happiness. Isharia grimaced as the waves of sluggish glee buffeted her shields, "I hate it when you're intoxicated. No control, Shayla, no control," she muttered under her breath, glancing at her friend from the corner of her eye.
They floated sedately along, twisting and turning through the narrows until they reached the descent shaft that would take them back up to the surface. Isharia pulled up alongside a battered, rusted toll-droid hovering by the entrance and reached her card out for it to scan. After a few seconds its faltering mechanised voice croaked out, "PAYMENT...ZZZZ...-PTED...ZZZZ...PROCEED," leaving Isharia free to manoeuvre the speeder into the looming duct.
Once inside, she fiddled with the buttons and touch sensors on the dashboard to set the machine to climb and relaxed back against the dark leather upholstery for the ascent.
Shayla, it seemed, had finally fallen asleep, her head lolled back against the headrest with her full lips wide open and her hair falling around her in royal blue waves. Every so often she would let out a soft snore before her breath settled back into an even rhythm. Isharia felt an upwelling of affection fill her as she contemplated her best friend; she looked so innocent when she slept, her pretty features relaxed and open and her expression soft. For all the trouble Shayla caused her, she was a wonderful friend, the only person who was willing to befriend the odd palehuman girl that looked so nervous around other people.
Shayla had taught her more than Isharia cared to admit, before meeting her she had no real social skills at all. Years of being shunned by her peers and then the restrictive culture of the Hunters had seriously undermined her ability to communicate with others, not that being on Brion would have taught her that anyway. Shayla had opened her up to a world of possibility, her free spirited, happy-go-lucky attitude combined with her open mindedness towards just about anything was a breath of fresh air for someone who was used to be part of a collective rather than an individual.
Isharia watched as the stained, grimy metal walls of the shaft gradually grew cleaner as they approached civilised society; the dank green mould making way for large coloured posters and holographic neon ads. They were the only people returning to the surface so the whole tunnel was empty and the usual hum of motors absent.
Catching a flickering light out of the corner of her eye, Isharia looked down to see the display on the dashboard indicating they had reached the top floor and switched the speeder off of climb and on to fly. Flashing her card to a much newer, better cared for looking toll-droid she pulled out of the descent shaft and slid smoothly onto one of the many busy skylanes dotting the upper levels of the ecumenopolis.
The skyline was alight with life as from every level light flowed into the night, creating a dusky glow akin to the setting of a thousand tiny suns. Speeders rocketed past the towering steel monoliths in droves, pouring through the sky in glowing trails of activity. If the thumping bass of the Entertainment District was the heart of the planet, the bright rivers of speeders were the veins and capillaries, transporting nutrients in the form of goods and people across the living city.
Grinning, Isharia shifted her speeder into top gear and opened herself to the Force, using the tremors of premonition and extrasensory perception to weave artfully through the masses at high speeds. She felt like laughing with exhilaration and pure delight as she put the Airstreamer to good use dodging and ducking the queues of traffic. 'One good thing came out of tonight,' Isharia thought with excitement, 'can't do this when Shayla's awake!' She pressed down harder on the accelerator, pushing the purple speeder into the realm of racing speed and shooting past the other traffic. The lights and buildings sped past in blurs of flashing colour as the Airstreamer whizzed by them all. Isharia could've crowed with glee, rarely did see get to indulge her need for speed like this, feeling the little blips of life in the Force flicker and run alongside her in bursts of pure adrenaline. These sorts of speeds would be highly dangerous for most humans, their reaction time too slow to handle the dramatic changes of direction necessary for high-speed navigation.
The journey back was fairly simple, Isharia owned a modest apartment on the higher floors of a standard living complex just off from the university grounds. As an employed lab assistant, medicacademic and soon-to-be post-grad student, she was entitled to accommodation on site but she refused to have her entire life dominated by her job.
'Good thing too,' she considered with some amusement, 'I don't think the university tenancy agreement extends to crazy friends who party hard and occasionally send random 'guests' to cheer me up.' Her lips quirked up in a small smile, 'I would have been evicted within the week, so much for responsible academic.'
Her home was about an hour's journey from the centre of the Entertainment District at the speed she was currently at, three if you flew like everyone else. She was lucky that the Jedi made this their home planet, as such, high speed chases and fast flying speeders were hardly uncommon and so long as you didn't cause an accident, were barely noticed.
The rest of the journey was relatively uneventful, Shayla still sat snoring in the passenger seat while Isharia continued to thread through the other speeders at dizzying speeds. By the time they slowly pulled into the parking level of her building it was about threetwo-thirty in the morning and much of the surrounding residential area was dark and quiet. Isharia skilfully slid the Airstreamer into her apartment's designated parking space and switched off the engine, leaving the dashboard display to power down and the craft to lower sedately to the ground. She opened the door, taking care not the scratch the finish on Mrs Garzeb's red IconCorp family speeder (they still hadn't found the body of the last poor person who did) and climbed out. She strolled over to the other side and nudged Shayla, "C'mon, Shay, we're here," she whispered lowly, brushing the thick strands of blue hair from her eyes.
Shayla's lilac orbs fluttered half open, "Hmm?" she hummed tiredly, still half asleep. She blinked slowly up at Isharia and closed her eyes again, turned into the upholstery and shifted down against it to go back to sleep.
Isharia tutted and rolled her eyes before reaching back to shake the drowsy Zeltron awake again, "You need to get up, Shayla. I'm not carrying you to my apartment," she murmured softly.
Shayla sighed quietly and slowly exited the vehicle. As she stood, she quickly lost balance in her high heels and swayed into Isharia who caught her just before she tumbled to the floor. It appeared that most of the glitterstim had worn off now; Shayla's eyes, while tired, no longer had that hazy unfocused look and her twitching muscles had stilled. 'Courtesy of those two livers,' Isharia supposed, once again pulling Shayla's arm around her shoulders to help her stumble up to the apartment, 'If it'd been me I would've been under the influence 'til morning,' she thought with a frown of displeasure.
Together they lurched towards the turbolifts on the other side of the floor, using the other speeders and support pillars to assist in their ungainly stumbling. When they finally crossed the lot, Isharia keyed in the code for her apartment and let the machine scan her retina, the turbolift call activating when it had been accepted. As they waited for the turbolift, Isharia repositioned Shayla from where she was sagging into her side with her chin digging painfully into her shoulder.
The air around them was still and stale from the lack of circulation and the orange lights flickered dolefully overhead. The sounds of the busy city outside were muted by the permacrete walls and the space around them was large and cavernous, giving the level a sort of echoing hush.
The turbolift arrived with a baleful sounding ping! and they stepped inside. The inside was a dull chrome, tarnished from years of neglect with out of date advertisements and flyers plastering the walls in a mismatched collage. Over the speakers the tinny voice of a forgotten one-hit-wonder jingled out scratchily above their heads and the dingy enclosed space stunk of someone's takeaway.
Isharia wrinkled her nose in disgust as they rapidly rose the forty or so floors to her reach her level. As much as she loved the autonomy living as a nameless no one on Coruscant had given her, she couldn't help but pine somewhat for her luxurious high- rise penthouse on Brion or her sumptuous palace suite.
The turbolift ground to a stop some moments later and the doors jolted open to a nondescript dark corridor. The walls and carpet were a bland beige, utilitarian and clean, while the dim lighting shone industrial yellow. The hallway was broken up by standard dull metal doors on either side spaced between unoriginal pieces of modern art. The overall effect was about as uninspiring and bland as most of the inhabitants, many of whom were about as talkative and interesting as rocks.
'Although,' Isharia mused as she pulled herself and Shayla along the corridor, 'the uni students we had living at the end of the hall last year were fairly entertaining,' she acceded with her brow wrinkled in thought, 'loud, but entertaining.'
The two of them came to a stop outside a door marked 40076B and Isharia leant forward to present her eye to once more, trying not to blink as the red light of the scanner shone right into her face. A ring of green light lit up around the door as her retina was verified prompting it to slide open with a muted thunk.
Shuffling inside, Isharia groped around the wall for the light switch, moving her hand around blindly in the dark over the smooth surface of herthe white paint. Upon finding it, she flicked it down illuminating a modest open plan living space.
Her apartment on Coruscant was designed similarly to her one on Brion, albeit smaller; the main space was open and light with white walls and checkerboard furnishings offset by the pale faux-wood floors and large glass windows. She had a few coloured accents placed around the room to liven it up a bit, splashes of scarlet and sunshine; fiery colours that would've been unwelcome and unheard of on Brion.
Near the entrance to her apartment was the kitchen area with its white cupboards and false black stone surfaces. It was probably the place she had spent the most time and money on, her medical training and the Hunter exercise regime that she kept up turning her into something of a health nut. She'd stretched her meagre academic's salary about as far as it would go, installing state-of-the-art kitchen appliances and splashing out on crockery and kitchenware.
Off to the side was a short corridor that branched into two bedrooms and a refresher. Kicking her deactivated cleaning droid out of the way, she shuffled herself and Shayla down it and into her spare room. Not bothering to turn on the light, she toppled heavily back onto the small double bed in an inelegant sprawl, taking Shayla with her.
After carefully extracting herself from her friend's long limbs she stared up at the ceiling for a moment and sighed, she could feel the edges of her thoughts grow fuzzier and her eyelids leaden as tiredness caught up with her. It had been a long day, between her highly stressful presentation in front of the Medical and Biological Studies board at the university and tonight's misadventures she was knackered. 'I can't be bothered to move,' she thought yawning, 'Shayla and I can handle sleeping in our clothes and makeup for one night, it's not as if we haven't done it before,' she decided sleepily.
Decision made, she rolled herself over with a tired groan and drifted off to sleep with the sound of Shayla's soft snores behind her.
