Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars.
Time-Line: roughly 3 years and four months after Naboo.
Phantasm 8: Slip and Slide
Just under three and a half years of near constant training in various kinds of combat and investigation, along with running a number of small missions, meant that Rae wasn't surprised when Da'na decided to invite her on a mission through the lower levels of Coruscant. "So... what kind of mess are we getting ourselves in to?" she asked, handing the Jedi Investigator a mug of tea. Da'na chuckled and tugged off her over robe.
"A black market auction. Your alias going to fit in?" she asked. Rae hummed, thinking about her more underworld friendly aliases. Jan was a regular card shark. Sure, she might know of the auction but she wouldn't be one to attend. And Shiva had a reputation to uphold. Maybe if there was something Shiva would want?
"Ah... what kind of goods will be up for bid?"
"Big ticket items, stuff you don't usually see in the market. Prototype ship mods, contraband creature parts, and the head liner... relics from a Force temple," Da'na answered. Rae sighed and shook her head.
"Yeah no, my current aliases won't do," she said. "Gonna need a smuggler alias for this one. How much time do I have?"
"Uh... a week and a half?" Rae growled softly before sighing.
"I'll need to talk to a few contacts, but I might be able to work it out. Comm me with the date and time then meet me at the Tipsy Dug on level 1313 about two hours before hand. Should have all we need to get in the door by that point."
"Rae... we aren't joining the auction. We're infiltrating and then busting," Da'na pointed out. Rae scoffed.
"You really think this kind of auction is the kind you can just walk into without a rep? No. These kinds need either a recognizable name or a contribution. Trust me," she said. Da'na frowned.
"Okay... How often have you gone to the lower levels?" she asked her friend's not-really-a-padawan. Rae shrugged.
"A couple of times, but usually for the just-this-side of legal gadgets or a bar where no-one cares who or what you are as long as you have money. It's a rather freeing experience... and a great way to pick up intel and some of the more... unique... currency types. Jan has gotten banned from a few pazzak dens on charges of cheating but, of course, no-one can prove it. Force Intuition, it's a heck of a thing, ya know?"
"Is... that how Jan talks?" Da'na asked. Rae nodded and picked up a data-pad, eyes focused and fingers tapping.
"Jan is very close to my usual personality," she said, "but she's a card shark, not the kind to attend shady auctions. I'm setting up a smuggler; Frey Farlin. Reaching out to some people for intel on rare finds, see if I can't get some small ticket items to join the auction."
"Should you be telling me these things?" Da'na asked. Rae gave her a roguish grin.
"Hey, we're planning to bust this shindig up and seize all the goods, right? Consider this as cleaning up more of the illicit goods floating around the galaxy," she said. Da'na sighed, but let it go.
"I'll meet you at the Tipsy Dug then," she said, leaving Rae to her preparations.
/*/
Honestly, it wasn't hard to mock up a bare-bones alias. If she was going to be doing real smuggling she'd put more effort into it, but that would also take longer than a week. So, bare bones it was. With the basics covered, she turned her attention to the part that would be remembered: how Frey Farlin looked. Her style, her walk, and her face. Rae stood in front of her bed and stared at the collection of long sleeve shirts, light synthleather jackets, and close fitting dark brown pants she'd dug out and sighed. "My clothes are sorted, but what about the face?" she mused, drifting over to the dresser she'd put next to her dinged up vanity. "Let's see what I've got here." Out came a near startlingly amount of cosmetics, an array of synth-flesh patches, and a jar of adhesive for said patches. She stared into the mirror, then scrunched her nose before pulling open one of the top drawers and looking at the array of wigs in their hair nets, nestled in old shoe boxes. Deciding to just Zen her way through it, she closed her eyes and let her hand drift. Before long, she heard the Force trilling louder and softer depending on where her hand went. Smirking, Rae played Hot or Cold with the Force to select a mid-bicep length wig of a rich, deep brown. Still, the Force was trilling, so Rae moved her hand down to the drawer full of hair accessories. When she pulled her hand back, she found the Force had lead her to a single, nondescript, brown hair tie. She shrugged and brought the items over to the vanity where she slipped on a skull cap, carefully tucking all of her own, red toned, brunette hair under it. With the wig firmly in place, she held the hair tie for a moment before nodding and pulling the wig into a secure but loose low ponytail. Looking at herself, she thought she looked a bit like the girl from the last Star Wars film she'd watched. Oh, what was her name? 'I'm a rebel, I rebel.' Yeah, her! Now that she had her hair, old memories popped up and the fresh smuggler swiftly worked to create a face similar to the one she had just remembered. It wasn't a perfect recreation, but then she didn't need it to be one. Next, she checked to see what colored contacts she had on hand. To her delight, she had some that were a dark enough brown to complete the look. Satisfied, she took a photo and then removed the disguise. No need for it when there were still two days before the mission.
/*/
True to her word, Da'na was standing outside the Tipsy Dug on level 1313 roughly a week later and two hours before the auction was meant to be happening. She'd been waiting for no more than ten minutes when a slight female with dark hair pulled back in a short, messy nerf tail walked up to her. "Hey there! You Da'na?" she asked with a Corellian accent. Da'na blinked and noticed the human was dressed like a Corellian pilot with scuffed brown boots, navy blue pants with dark red bloodstripes, and a well cared for leatheris jacket over a dusty colored shirt. A pair of pistols were just barely hidden under her jacket and her gloves showed the kind of wear a gunslinger developed after extensive practice with their blasters.
"Yeah, I am," Da'na answered, shaking herself from her inspection to be greeted with Rae's troublemaker grin under dark brown eyes.
"Wonderful! I'm Frey Farlin! Now, I hear you're looking to get into a real hush hush shindig. Well, I can get ya in as a prospective buyer. Got double crossed recently and needed to move some stuff to recoup the loss and thankfully... one of the suppliers for this auction got disappeared recently and their merch seized. Interested?" Da'na blinked. This was Rae's new alias? Interesting.
"Very much so," she said.
"Great! Come on, won't do to be late!" Frey said boisterously, hooked her arm with Da'na's and dragged the togruta deeper into Coruscant's underbelly.
/*/
It wasn't long after that they got to the auction house: a ramshackle cantina with a flickering holosign, the perfect place to hide. They stepped inside and scanned the patrons. Frey quickly moved past Da'na, who was being a bit more deliberate with her once-over, and toward the bar.
"I'll have a Black Walker on the rocks," she said, leaning casually against the counter top. The bartender nodded and set the glass in front of her before dropping in the large, clear, cube and pouring the finely aged amber alcohol over it.
"Really, Frey? Didn't take you for a Scotchy," Da'na said, finally making her way over. The smuggler gave her a quelling look.
"Don't ever call me that again," she told the undercover Jedi, taking a sip while maintaining eye contact over the rim. "These kinds of places have surprisingly good Scotch too. You should try some."
"How a woman as boisterous and dramatic as you can enjoy a sipping drink I do not understand," Da'na said. "I'll have a Fuzzy Taun Taun." Frey scrunched her nose.
"Decent scotch they might have, their tequila is piss," she said, taking another sip. Da'na frowned.
"It's hard to mess up a Fuzzy Taun Taun."
"Anything can be ruined by poor ingredients," Frey maintained. "Even mechanical components. Better hope those prototypes you mentioned are made with better materials than that concoction you just ordered." Da'na was skeptical... until she took a sip of her FTT and started to gag and sputter. Frey smirked and sipped her Scotch.
"Not... a word," Da'na growled, leveling a finger at the smug woman. Frey saluted her with her tumbler and turned back to the amused bartender.
"While your Scotch is excellent, I didn't come here just for a drink... or to see my companion here embarrass herself," she said and the op was officially begun.
/*/
As far as undercover sting ops went, this one was shaping up to be one of the more entertaining ones... and confusing. Rae made a good partner, honestly. Her Frey mindset wasn't too difficult to reconcile with her usual mindset but... there were so many little things that Da'na hadn't realized Rae did that could seem threatening in another context. Finally, they had what they needed and Da'na sent the signal to Rae. "As lovely as all these lots are, I'm afraid I'm going to have to close this auction down," Da'na called out. Frey groaned and bounced her head off the back of her chair lightly while the hall erupted into a cacophony of expletives and a rush of drawn weapons.
"These prices are ridiculous anyway," Frey remarked, raising to her feet. "Honestly, Da'na, if I'd known the rest of the lots were gonna be so boring I would have suggested we just hit the warehouse."
"Ah, but then you wouldn't have gotten to enjoy toying with these fools," Da'na countered. Frey hummed, twisting out of the way of a foolish rodian with a vibroknife.
"Fair enough," she allowed, dropping said rodian with a solid knife hand to the back of his neck. "Time to have some fun~!" And soon blue stun rings were filling the air as Frey pulled her two pistols free and began thinning the herd. Soon, it was just a few stragglers fleeing the scene. "Da'na! Secure the area! I'm going after our runners!" Frey called.
"Just be careful! These levels can be treacherous!" Da'na called back. Frey tossed a two fingered salute over her shoulder, still holding her blaster, as she tore after the runners faster than a baseline human should be capable of. An hour later, the auction site was secure and Coruscant Police had arrived so Da'na went after Frey. The 'smuggler' was shining in the Force like a mischievous sprite... but her enthusiasm was waning and Da'na worried at the red sparks of anger she could sense in Frey's playful blue-green. She caught up with them in time to see Frey bend backwards and slide forward on a patch of oil to avoid a falling crate before spinning around, using the slickness of the oil to sling her legs into the knees of the last miscreant.
"Five! Five times you and yer skug buddies tried that and each time I dodged. Why did you think this time would be different?" Frey barked at the sad looking rodian.
"I wasn't expecting the oil," he said. Frey let out a wordless sound of frustration and kicked the crate she'd narrowly dodged.
"Da'na! Take care of this one. I need to go break something. A box, a plank, traffic laws, some poor idiot's worldview, doesn't matter! I! Am Gone! Goodbye!" the woman declared dramatically before stalking off into the night. Da'na shook her head and moved to finish taking the rodian into custody. Rae never ceased to amaze.
/*/
Those moves... she hadn't been pushing her limits like that lately but... Rae was sure she hadn't been quite that good at dodging the last time she'd had cause to practice. Which meant... "So. I unlocked a new ability, huh? That means..." she pulled up her handy DnD reference site. Oddly enough, this site didn't seem to be stuck in 2016. Rae shook her head and focused, tapping on the monk class to check the ability table. There, level seven, Evasion. Yeah, that tracked. She frowned. Wait. Didn't she have some Rogue levels too? She was fairly sure a hacker's datapad counted as some sort of Thieves Tools, and she was fairly proficient with her modified datapad. She checked the Rogue Table as well and sighed. Well. Now she wasn't sure if she was a level seven Monk or a level seven Rogue. And if she was a Rogue, what was her... oh wait. Shiva. Shiva was an Assassin. If she didn't have that as her archetype already, she would soon. A heavy sigh and Rae put her Ipad aside to rub at her eyes. "What am I becoming?" she asked her still apartment. A pile of aliases, a slowly growing collection of disguises, shadowy abilities, increasingly lethal skills, and little remorse for the blood that already stained her hands and soul... was she becoming part of The Problem rather than The Solution?
"Where other men blindly follow the truth, remember nothing is true. Where other men are limited by morality or law, remember everything is permitted. We work in the dark to serve the light. We are Assassins." Rae huffed as the words echoed in the small living room for only her to hear.
"I never wanted to be an assassin," she said. "I never asked for any of this."
"This is the path you walk, the path you chose. Will you turn back now?"
"I suppose... in a way... I did choose this path, didn't I? No. I will not turn back now," Rae answered, straightening her back and shoulders from where she had slumped forward. Happy, triumphant trumpets trilled and she chuckled. Seemed the Force was pleased with her. At least that was something.
/?/
A/N: Frey and Hondo are going to either be the best of friends... or the direst of enemies. I do not foresee there being any in-between.