.:Swoop Wars:.
Rick gave a sigh of relief as he and Kinraar walked out of the Medical Facility. He was tired, hot, and dirty. Had he not been given a job by Alison to get himself some half decent clothes to wear to the dance, he'd have gone back to the Ebon Hawk, had a shower, and then crashed into one of the beds for a while.
Unfortunately, he could only have a shower, and a quick one at that. So, despite being near exhausted, he rushed into the refresher on board the Ebon Hawk, had a quick shower, and then dashed back out again.
Alison had said the dance didn't start until midnight that night; unfortunately, Rick was making new clothes for both himself and Alison, and he never made half-decent clothes.
So, after racing around Ahto City with Kinraar in tow, he bought the best materials he could afford, which Kinraar carried for him, and then dashed back to the Ebon Hawk.
When he finally got started on the clothes, it was about six PM galactic-standard time, leaving him six hours to make the clothes, try them on there owners, then prepare for the dance.
Three hours later, he'd finished. The clothes weren't exactly formal, but they were semi-dressy. Well, his was only semi-dressy. He first examined his choice of attire. A pair of dark sea-green pants made of fine linen, a short sleeves turquoise tunic of soft silk, and a dark-green almost black leather jacket with indigo lining.
Then he turned to examine the dress he'd made for Alison, exact to her request. It was a floor length dress, the kind Padme would never be caught dead in, made of sapphire blue silk that sparkled like real sapphires, with a v-neck, and a slit down the back.
With the two sets of clothing complete, he neatly folded the dress and put it in a bag, then put his clothes in another bag and the shoes in a box.
Then he used the Force to levitate all three packages in front of him whilst he went in search of Alison, making a mental note to deal with the state of his robes, which were torn, frayed, burned, and had been splashed with a dozen types of mud and even blood, after the dance.
It didn't take him long to find Alison, he just followed the strings of curses and the odd thump here and there; in the cockpit with HK-47 and JAINA. A pair of legs was that was visible of Alison, as she was underneath one of the service panels fixing something. JAINA upon seeing Rick approach; slung her rifle over her shoulder and walked forward.
"Sarcastic Greeting: It is most gracious to be in your presence once more, Meatbag Master." She said, sarcasm dripping from her mechanized voice.
"Mistress Alison was just adding security to make sure slimy Fish-Bags did not try to break into Ship 1468-AR."
Rick turned to Alison for a translation as she pulled herself up and obliged with a mocking grin; "She said that I'm adding extra security so the Selkath don't stick the slimy noses where they don't belong."
"Oh, okay. On a better note, I've finished your dress." Rick announced, giving Alison the bag with the dress in it. Alison grabbed the bag out of the air, and opened it, examining her dress.
Seemingly satisfied, she grabbed her shoes from the box, and walked out of the cockpit.
"Keep increasing the security." Rick said to the droids as he turned to go after Alison.
"So what do you think?" He asked, trying to keep up with her fast pace as she took the shortest route through the ship to get to the Port dormitories.
She paused in the doorway, and stared at him coldly; "I'll tell you in a minute."
"Why?" Rick demanded, inching closer to Alison, "why not now?"
Alison glared at him, "while I may like you, we are not close enough yet for you to see me undressing, or naked for that matter. Now get out!"
She planted a hand on his chest and pushed him out of the doorway with the Force as it slammed shut in his face.
Rick glared sulkily at the door, "fine," he muttered under his breath. Rick did not have to wait long before the door opened and Alison stepped out, dressed in the newly made dress.
She smiled at him and walked slowly forward, taking care with each step, "thanks Rick. It's lovely…" She leaned in and gave him a soft peck on the cheek before she looked him up and down.
"Aren't you going to change as well?" She asked, rather archly, staring at his ruined robes with disgust, quickly moving away from him. "Yours smell horrible!" She exclaimed and looked down at her now ruined dress in annoyance.
"I was planning to fix them after the…" Rick never finished his sentence as Alison glared at the ruined dress.
"…Darkness!" Alison slapped her forehead with a white gloved hand and sighed; closing her eyes she called upon the Force and cleaned her dress.
Focusing the Force on Rick, she repaired his robes within two minutes and then left to visit the communications' room, but not before telling him to get his clothes on soon.
He nodded, and ran back to the Port dormitory, shut the door in case one of his room mates came back soon, then he quickly stripped of his robes, then pulled on the pants, tunic and jacket.
He'd weaved the dress with materials that could adjust the temperature in case it got too cold, so Alison wouldn't have to worry about getting cold.
He, on the other hand, could, which was why he'd made the jacket as well as the tunic. Not that he expected it to get too cold. He was just thinking ahead.
He walked into the communications room, and found Alison conversing with Kinraar, but when she saw Rick coming, she stopped talking and walked over to him.
"Well, you certainly look…well, you look quite handsome in something other then Jedi Robes." Alison said. "Shall we go?"
"I'm ready when you are." Rick said, taking Alison's hand. The two of them walked down the Ebon Hawk boarding ramp. "Hey, did you get the location of the dance?"
"There's some kind of sub waiting to take us to the old Hrakert Station. That's where the dance is." Alison said. "We'll find it in Docking Bay 3."
Rick nodded when he saw the docking bay door and the two of them walked in to see that there was a submarine waiting for them. Actually, there were about a dozen two-seater submarines for different couples.
Alison led Rick to one sub in particular, he wasn't sure why and insisted she drive; which he wasn't too sure about either, but he didn't have a choice.
Alison was, apparently, a girl of many skills. It turned out that she could drive a submarine, almost as easily as she could fly a ship, and they arrived at the Hrakert Rift in next-to-no time.
As soon as they stepped out of the submarine, Rick saw that the station had been changed an awful lot since his mother and Revan had been there. For one thing, it had lights of about a dozen colors, and it had six tables with an assortment of foods from different worlds for different species.
Rick led Alison over to a table with food from Naboo, Corellia, Coruscant, and other places he wasn't familiar with, but it appeared that Alison was, as she exclaimed at some of the various foods with delight.
"Oh, look!" She pointed to a certain dish, "that's a Deralia cream tart, you have to try one, Rick. They're very sweet and good!" Alison was grinning as she swiped two off the table and gave him one, biting into the other tart immediately.
"Very sweet?" Rick asked, eying the tart with suspicion as Alison sighed.
"Just try it, Erick! Trust me on this," Her eyes pinned him with such deep emotion, that he gave in and bit into the tart.
"Hey, it's not bad!" Rick inspected the tart with curiosity as he ate more, "pretty good actually."
Alison nodded, "I told you so, dummy!" She ventured towards a salad and steak of some animal or other and waited as Rick dished up his plate of mostly meat and a few various greens before she moved away form the table, looking at the others for anything else of edible food.
"Rick, that's not going to sit well with your stomach later on." She smiled warningly as he inspected something that looked like an overgrown steak of nerf herder.
"Why? What is it?" Rick asked as she laughed, "that's special food from Kashyyyk, trust me you don't want to eat it."
He gave it one last lingering look and left it alone as she pulled him away from the tables.
Alison looked around for something to drink and found nothing to satisfy her taste. Sighing she pulled out her comlink and commed HK over a secure channel.
"HK, you remember that drink I told you to grab before we left the ship? Well bring it over here; I'm going to need it before the night over."
"I thought HK was on the ship." Rick was standing besides Alison now, a speck of mouth hanging on his lip. Alison rolled her eyes at him, "close your mouth when you talk, and don't talk with food in it."
Rick hastily wiped his face off with a napkin and frowned at her, waiting for a reply to his question, "aren't the droids, still at the ship, though?"
"Rick, they're not just droids! Why do you think they have names!" Alison grounded her teeth in annoyance, "of course they're not still at the ship, they came down here at the same time we did, perhaps a bit before. They're assassin droids, one of the primary functions in their protocols are to protect their masters aka us."
"Is that why JAINA treats me so coldly?" Rick asked, thinking as to how Alison was treated by JAINA compared to him. JAINA addressed Alison with her actual name and 'Mistress' as to Meatbag Master for him.
"What do you think?" Alison scoffed and looked around the room, shifting the weight to the other foot.
"Why don't we go and find somewhere to sit down?" Rick suggested, thinking that this would be a good way to get back in Alison's good books if she was more comfortable.
He led her a little ways towards one of the tables, where the lights from the water and lights underneath played across the table, painting blue shadows across her face as they sat down.
They started to talk for a while and then continued to eat their meals in silence, each waiting for the other one to make the first move.
By this time, HK had already brought Alison the item she had told him to bring her, one bottle of Tarisan Ale from her mother's private stash on the Ebon Hawk.
Of course though, this was only a small cache of the valued Tarisan Ale, her mother had somehow managed to secure the recipe form Mission's brother Griff and him as well, and then she had started to make the stuff and it tasted great! 'Course this was the real stuff, originally from Taris, Alison expected that her mother had left it on the 'Hawk on purpose for when Kari and Alison were older.
"What's that?" Rick asked, looking her glass, she was drinking.
"Nothing you'd like, handsome." Alison replied, pulling her glass away from his hand, and shielding her thoughts with the Force as he tried to probe the answer from her.
He grinned dangerously and leaned in across the table, "Try me."
"You ever have Tarisan Ale?" Alison asked, watching as Rick nodded, "thirteenth birthday, and a drink on each birthday after that. You know the Mandalorian culture, or at least you should." Rick snorted and rolled his eyes, "we both know that it's no lie, that your mother is really the true Mandalore."
"Better not advertise that, or your father, no matter how much he loves you, will beat you to a pulp. He is Mandalore …even if my mom and your dad did whatever it was to gain him the title." Alison shot back and both the teens glared at each other for a moment.
"I'm leaving if this is how the evening's going to be!"
Alison jumped up and stumbled on the heel of her shoes falling backwards with a little exclamation; Rick leaped up an instant before she grabbed onto the Force to steady herself and caught her instinctively, holding her a couple of inches above the ground in a classic dancer's dip.
Alison grabbed onto him as well, with her own instinct to keep from falling as the sudden burst of music followed their movement.
His eyes met hers as he pulled her back up and placed his hand around her waist and grasped her other hand in his. She reached up to his shoulder and reached it only when he bent down a little.
"This is going to be a long night," Rick thought, grimacing in anticipation of the pain his back and shoulders would be in the morning.
"I'll fix it later, Rick." Alison's voice popped into his head, and he suddenly realized something. He and Alison where bonded through the Force now.
She smiled at him as they started to dance and whispered softly, "took you long enough to figure out, handsome."
"You see? I told you, they would fall in love and tonight would be perfect to push them even closer!" Rain looked at Kevin who rolled his eyes and shook his head.
"All right, fine! You were right, Rain, all right?" Kevin closed his arms around Rain and pulled her out into the dancing floor, "now let's dance and forget about everything else, okay? We're supposed to be enjoying ourselves, not gossiping over Alison and Rick."
Towards the middle of the second dancing round, Alison lifted her head up from Rick's chest suddenly and he glanced down at her in concern and read of rejection; "what's wrong, Ali?"
She sputtered and started to giggle, pointing over to a dark corner of the room. "Look over there, Rick; look at that couple over there!"
Rick turned and looked at where she was pointing, and nearly choked. "What the hell are those two doing?" He exclaimed in shock and surprise.
Alison giggled again as she pulled out her comlink and echoed Mission Vao's famous words; "HK, get yourself and JAINA a room, before you do anything else. She turned her head to look at Rick, "looks like they were trying to make out as umm, well droids would."
There was an awkward silence and Rick swung her around as one of the spotlight centered on them. "Have to keep dancing dear, they're watching us." Alison grinned, "The crowd, Kev and Rain, or the droids?" Rick chuckled dryly, "all of them, I think."
"Then let's give them something to watch," Alison smiled and let him swing her up over his head and down and around in a complicated move.
Eventually the dance moved into its fourth round and the spotlight left them, focusing on the other dancers as Rick and Alison left the dance and returned to the surface. She shuddered as they walked on the top side, passing the Republic Embassy.
Rick frowned, "you're not cold are you?" Alison nodded and hugged her arms around her as she sneezed. Rick took off his jacket and hung it around her shivering shoulders, "I think you had too much to drink." Rick said as she swayed dizzily.
"Wait! I want that pet!" Alison pulled Rick towards the pet dealer, Nubassa, and pointed to the caat, hissing in its cage. Nubassa looked up in surprise.
"You want her? Take her and go, just go!" He thrust the cage and all at Alison who caught it as she stumbled back, while Rick gathered up all of the food supplies and extras.
Alison opened the cage up and let the caat crawl up onto her shoulder, its soft cuddly fur rubbing against her cheek. Rick reached out to pet it and it hissed at him, arching its back and digging its claws into her shoulder.
"Ouch!" He exclaimed as it swiped at him and glared at the offending paw. "That's one evil little beast, you have there."
"How dare you!Shayera is no beast!" Alison screamed at him and stomped her foot, forgetting she had high heels on and tripped backwards.
Rick reached out to grab her, but Shayera clawed him again scarring his face right above and below his right eye in three bright stripes; and he fell heavily onto Alison, both of them crashing into the ground.
She looked up at him and placed her arms behind his neck and pulled him closer. He let her pull him down until they were mere inches apart and they kissed, lovingly for a minute. "Wow." He breathed as she smiled tentatively at him, lying beneath him on the ground.
He pulled her up and gathered her in his arms, kissing her longer and more deeply this time. Alison closed her eyes as she clung to Rick, everything else did not matter.
She was finally at peace… He was finally happy for once…
They loved each other and finally, they knew it.
"This should prove interesting." The voice echoed in the darkness, as it watched the two youngsters fall prey to their emotions and hidden feelings.
"I wonder just how long, it will take for him to fall prey… he has much to learn before she will betray them all. The tears she'll cry afterwards, he'll never get to see when I am finished with them."
The laughter that echoed in the dark room, echoed and did not end as lights pulsed, a new aura flashing in the Force strongly, steadily growing as Rick and Alison kissed outside of the Ebon Hawk at the foot of the ramp.
A lover's kiss and death's cry, waiting for them inside, the seed of corruption and fear; growing in their hearts, forever more…
Pain and learning coming to pass and grow; trust and loyalty, now a whole new perspective in their lives... Lies and twisted conceit gone and yet, it still shadows their eyes.
And all of this because of their love for each other, now…
Thanks to all you Readers and the Reviewers as well. Please keep reviewing and we'll try to have the second part of Swoop Wars up soon as possible.