"What the hell is that?"
She gave Onasi an unimpressed look over her drink, his form blurred slightly by the thin haze lifting from the surface. "Mashutso, yan-telazhi."
A flash of irritation crossed his face. "You know, not everyone speaks every language in the kriffing galaxy."
"Honestly, Onasi, it's just Huttese." She took a sip, the heat of it rising in her cheeks, the spiced fruitiness seeming to shoot a giddy sort of energy straight into her veins. "And there aren't words in Basic for mashutso and telache anyway. It's Hutt alcohol, basically, but with the telache, an impurity, filtered out. It's poisonous to most other species, you see."
"Alcohol? So it gets you drunk?"
She shrugged. "Sort of. I'd describe mashutso intoxication as somewhere between alcohol and gree spice, actually. But yeah." Momentarily, she wondered to herself how exactly she knew what the high from any sort of spice at all felt like. Eh.
It took Onasi a moment to regain the self-control to speak — or, at least, to speak without screaming at her in the middle of the cantina. She took another sip as she watched him gritting his teeth, smiling at him with all the innocence she could muster (which surely wasn't much). Finally, he ground out, "Is this really the time?"
A smirk twisting her lips, she said, "I can't think of a more appropriate time, really."
She probably shouldn't find the way Onasi grimaced and cursed under his breath quite so funny.
Javyar's Cantina and Gameroom was a significantly different place than they'd found it yesterday, almost unrecognizable. Flatscreens had been hung on the walls, flashing the number of open seats, tournament rules, advertisements from sponsors and the like. All the furniture orbiting the bar had been replaced, the main room instead filled with a dozen and a half holographic sabaac tables. Instead of the usual patrons, a seedy crowd composed evenly of washed-out destitutes and bristling thugs, there were dozens of participants and a few hangers-on milling about the space, drinking, chatting, brooding. They were a curious lot, representing a variety of species and classes — she saw one two-headed being she didn't recognize at all, their dress running from rags to armor to fine silk to the leathers and brilliantly dyed synthweaves of professional players.
She'd been a bit surprised, some minutes ago, when she'd recognized Mission, complete with Zaalbar looming over her shoulder, furry shoulders slumped and arms petulantly folded. The girl had an ID badge and everything. Apparently, she was playing.
She wasn't sure she liked the look of the eager smirk on Mission's face. But it really wasn't her business.
They'd gotten here about a half hour early, had maybe another five minutes until the tables were set and they could get down to it. She hadn't bothered trying to scope out the competition — there were too many of them, a hundred at least, and she'd only be playing a small fraction of them. But she'd gotten bored of waiting, and Onasi hadn't let up with his impersonation of one of Cianen's more frustrating uncles. Hence, drink.
With the way the stuff metabolized, it hardly took long at all. The first few sips were already hitting her system. Not a lot, not enough to incapacitate her, it didn't dull her senses — if anything it made her sharper. It came as a sense of eagerness, of possibility, an irresistible energy that set her foot to tapping, her face to smirking. "Relax, Flyboy. I know what I'm doing."
He frowned at her, unease clear in his eyes. "Do you?"
On instinct, she opened her mouth to answer, something about obviously she did, this was her they were talking about. Then she stopped, considered it for a second. This was rather outside of her experience — Cianen had played a little sabacc with friends just for fun, but certainly nothing like this — but going about this sabaac tournament credit-making scheme of hers she'd been possessed with an unshakeable sense of confidence she couldn't explain. She'd just been rolling with it, honestly. "It appears I do, yes."
That didn't reassure him at all, of course.
They spent the next few minutes in uncomfortable silence, on his end at least. He sat there pouting, glaring at her now and again, while she sat apart, watching the crowd and slowly sipping at her drink. By the time the tables were finally announced, he gave up, said he would be in one of the showrooms until it was over. He clearly expected her to be eliminated quickly, throwing away what little money they had. Which was really quite silly of him, he'd been there when she'd cleaned out all his pilots, again and again and again.
All of them excluding Ferlip, anyway. She would say he had a nenthar's own luck, if he weren't floating in a bacta tank back at Zelka's, deep in a coma he'd likely never wake from. Cast a shadow on the thought, that.
Before long, she found herself sitting with seven other beings, plus an Exchange employee serving as dealer. (She mostly managed to not scowl at the sight of the sunburst-and-dagger insignia on his lapel.) The table flickered into life, play areas demarcated with glowing lines, a colorful illusion of chips appearing before each of them. The dealer gave a threatening grumble about following the fucking rules or else, a small ante was drawn from all of them, and the game started.
Resisting the urge to glare at the dealer, she rearranged her cards so one was atop the other, instead of randomly splayed across her section of the table — there was really no reason to throw them around like that. She bent the near, narrow end of the flexiscan cards up, just enough to make out the numbers before dropping them again. Seven of flasks and the Wheel, for a balance of three pos. This hand was going to be awkward.
The betting went around once, after a second of waffling she decided to fork over the fifty creds needed to stay in, despite her doubts about her hand. At this early stage, it didn't really matter that much. The dealer threw out another round of cards, she slipped it to the top of her stack before tipping up a corner. Six of staves.
Hmm.
She looked out at the table, taking in the cards other people were locking, and barely held back a snort. A human woman halfway around the table had locked in an Idiot, the Ithorian across from her had Void and a seven of sabers — she had no idea what the woman was thinking, and it looked like the Ithorian, locked in at twenty-five neg, was hoping to draw or shift up into a win. And they were the first two to lock, the rest were still thinking.
She hadn't realized there would be bloody amateurs in this tournament.
Locking in the Wheel and the six, she sat through the round of betting, participated only so much as she needed to to stay in. She was slightly surprised when the Nikto next to her folded. Before the first shift, even. Okay. As soon as the betting was over, the table flashed, signaling the shift.
Once it was over, she tipped up the corner of her card — and held back a wince. Master of sabers. That didn't help her at all. When it came to her turn to ask for another card, she waved the dealer off. She didn't miss the flicker on a couple faces, a rather seedy-looking Devaronian to her right, the Fool woman. She let herself smirk.
When the betting came around, two men who were obviously gang members glaring as they bet and raised, she raised for the first time in the hand. Not a lot, but some, bringing the round up to three-fifty. The Fool woman folded flat out at that, but the rest stayed in, despite the clear hesitation stalling the Devaronian's fingers for a couple seconds. Then came another locking phase.
The Fool woman glared when she didn't lock anything in. She smirked again.
The shift hit again, she tipped up the corner of her card. Six of coins, putting her at twenty-two pos. Perfect. But she kept the satisfaction off her face, narrowed her eyes just for a second before relaxing again.
The best strategy, of course, was to make yourself as expressionless as possible. Faking tells was all well and good for the first few hands, but eventually the others would catch on, it only worked for so long. Well, no, the best strategy was to find some way to taunt a few people on the table if you could, try to get them angry. Angry people were stupid people. But, yes, faking tells didn't work past the first few hands, but it did work the first few hands, so it was still useful.
And the Devaronian jumped on it like an idiot, immediately betting five hundred. Which, as small as the buy-in was, meant anyone calling would have sunk half their creds on the first hand. Most of the table realized that, all of them except the Ithorian folded. Still didn't know what he (she?) was thinking, but okay. It was only the three of them in now, actually.
Instead of taking another card, she threw down her last one, locking herself in. Half the table glared at her. She just smiled back, sipping at her mashutso. They both stayed in through the next shift, but the Devaronian ended up way over, his last draw still putting him at twenty-six pos, and the Ithorian managed to draw up to twenty neg.
In a few minutes, she'd just managed to — she glanced at the count next to her illusory chips — a little less than double their money. Even after the house took their share, she was up a thousand credits. And Onasi had been so insistent this was a terrible idea.
If she knew where the cameras were, she'd be smirking at them right now.
The rest of the game went more or less along the same lines. There were a few hands she took a hit on. She'd always stay in until at least the first shift, but sometimes it went badly enough she decided to fold instead of sink more money into a questionable hand. It didn't really matter though, her wins were more than making up for a few minor losses here and there. The other players were bankrupted one by one, until there were only two of them left.
This tournament was rather peculiar in that, once a table had been reduced to two players, they played against each other, but both were automatically all-in. So, really, they weren't playing against each other so much as they were playing against the shift. For a moment, she thought she was going to overdraw, and lose the first round — not that it mattered, she had far more credits than he did, she'd have another chance. But, at the last moment, in a shift even she would call simple luck, her nine of coins became the Queen of Air and Darkness, and she had twenty-three. And that was that.
See, Onasi? A single game of sabaac and she'd already multiplied their money by seven. Of course, it wasn't money she got to keep, it stayed in the tournament, but that was only two more games. Even if she just made it to the last table, only needed to win one measly little game, she would still make them tens of thousands of credits. And since Taris was apparently short on decent sabaac players, that shouldn't even be hard.
Maybe he should just listen to her next time.
Giving the girl a hard look across the table, she set down the Mortifying and the ace of sabers, transforming her pathetic eight pos into a perfect twenty-three neg. Mission's bright grin flickered, a shade of annoyance creasing the smooth, deep blue skin of her forehead.
Mission had no right at all to be annoyed. She was cheating.
It'd taken her a while to figure out what was going on. Meeting Mission at the final table was a bit of a surprise, and there had been a dark cast to her smirk that had immediately set her on edge. Most of the time, it was subtle, she took care to not advertise it. Whatever slice she'd done was very minimal. She smoothly sailed into hands in the twenties more frequently than was statistically likely, but sometimes it just worked out like that. A few hands, when Mission narrowly edged someone out by a point, she'd be struck with this odd... She wasn't certain how to describe it, really. Like eyes on the back her head, her spine tingling, an electricity in the air she couldn't explain.
Of course, Mission had to remove all doubt when she shifted herself into an Idiot's Array. That could have been explained by simple luck — if she hadn't given another player, who'd managed to get a twenty-three on the deal, a tauntingly smug little smirk.
The kid might be skilled enough to slice the table, but she wasn't mature enough to hide it very well.
Once she'd figured out what was happening, she'd only stayed in hands she thought could easily put her above twenty, folding out of mediocre hands she might have run with otherwise. It'd kept her in this long. She had won this hand, just barely, sealing the fate of a human man with garish taste in clothes — probably thought himself rakish, but honestly he just hurt to look at. With a dramatic, good-natured sigh, the man stood, leaving just the two of them.
Which meant she'd be playing against the shift with a cheater. And Mission had more credits than her.
She was going to lose on the next hand.
Practically speaking, that wasn't too big of a deal. She'd made it to second place at least, which guaranteed her a quarter million credits. (And that was after the house's cut, she'd checked the fine print.) But she might have gotten half a mil instead if this cheeky little shit weren't cheating.
It was quite frustrating, but she was trying to not let it bother her.
The room was empty at this point, just her, Mission, Zaalbar looming behind her, and the dealer, the audience and the eliminated players relegated to the various showrooms and bars scattered across the five levels of this tower run by the cantina. In almost eerie silence, the stone-faced Exchange grunt passed out four cards and then another two, all face-up, starting what would probably be the last hand of the tournament.
She openly frowned at her hand in front of her. Endurance, three of staves, nine of flasks — which could be two pos or fourteen neg. A glance up showed the girl was locking in the master of flasks and the Queen of Air and Darkness, holding back her ten of staves to be shifted out, putting her at twelve/sixteen neg. She was obviously aiming for a negative hand, using the Queen to give her a bit of wiggle room. (Despite its low point value, the Queen was a very valuable card for just that reason.)
She had to assume Mission would cheat herself into a twenty-two or twenty-three neg. The smartest thing to do, then, was to aim for a positive hand. Her hand wasn't perfect for it but, if she were lucky, she could win outright or at least force a split. The table was stacked against her, but she could try, at least. She locked in Endurance and the three, held back the nine.
Mission's third card was shifted into a ten of sabers — with a bright grin, Mission immediately pushed the card forward, locking in at twenty-two neg.
Her own card shifted into...into Justice. She blinked, glanced between their hands for a second, probability figures running through her head. Then she slid Justice forward, locking in at 6/22 pos. She beckoned the dealer with a finger, not breaking eye contact with Mission. "Card, please."
Mission's grin flickered, her eyes narrowing. The same math she'd figured was surely running through the girl's head. With Mission at twenty-neg, she needed twenty-three to win — if she figured the house rules correctly, if she tied with one more card, but also one more face card, they'd split the pot and go again. Twenty-three neg was too far away to get with a single card, so she needed twenty-two or twenty-three pos.
But, the trick was, like the Queen, Endurance could be either positive or negative, at the player's choice. If it were positive, she would win with the Idiot or the Word or a one of coins or staves. If it were negative, she would tie with Temperance or a master of coins or staves, and win with an ace of coins or staves. None of those cards were in use, all nine options were in play. Not only was she drawing a new card, but there were two more shifts she could use as well. That meant she had three chances to get it.
Assuming she'd done the math in her head correctly, she had about a one in four chance of at least staying in for another hand. Twenty-one out of seventy-six, yes, that was about a quarter.
The dealer set down her new card. Five of flasks, no good. "Shift."
As the dealer moved to key the shift, Mission brought her hands together, one thumb rubbing at the center of her palm. The fingers, though, slipped a little into her sleeve.
She glared at the girl, who looked to be trying to hold in a smirk.
The shift gave her a four of staves. She didn't expect it to do any good, with this cocky little shit cheating, but she called for the last shift anyway. The Star.
And that was that, she'd lost.
The flatscreens were blaring something or another, one of the hosts blabbing off, a few patrons already starting to sweep into the main room, but she ignored all that. Before she'd even made it to her feet, Mission had sprung up, wrapping her arms around her Wookiee friend and giggling. Zaalbar's face was pinched a little with exasperation, but there was still warmth there, sparkling in his dark eyes. He even picked her up and spun her around a couple times, roaring congratulations in her ears, Mission's ecstatic screeching bouncing off the walls.
She couldn't help smiling a little at the sight. Of course, if she hadn't come away with a quarter mil, multiplying their credits by a factor of a hundred in a single day, it might have been a different story. She might have been too annoyed to enjoy the sight of their innocent, adolescent happiness. Innocent might not be quite the right word, but she still found them oddly...precious, she guessed.
Before whatever had happened to her, she really must not have been around happy people very much.
She would definitely have to rub Onasi's nose in this, though. He'd been so convinced she would ruin everything. A quarter mil should be more than enough to equip themselves however they needed, possibly even bribe their way off the planet. They were all set, and she hadn't even needed to commit any misdemeanors along the way.
She wondered if she could get Onasi to punch her in her own smug face. Probably not, he did seem like the never-hit-a-woman type...
Eventually, Mission and Zaalbar were done celebrating, the girl still glowing with a brilliant grin. Before the tournament officials could make their way over, start the process of handing out everyone's winnings, she slid up to them. "Nice playing, Mission."
The girl stalled a moment, blinking at her hand once or twice before taking it. "Thanks, Cina, you too. No hard feelings, right?"
"Of course." She clenched tighter on Mission's hand, jerked down and back. The girl stumbled forward a step with a low yelp, putting their faces next to each other's, her nose a shade away from the girl's tchin...which was apparently what right-side lekku were called in Ryl, she hadn't known she knew that. Muttering low under her breath, "Maybe you should be more careful doing that in future." She clasped Mission's shoulder for a moment, emulating the gesture common in many human cultures for their audience. "Someone might take it rather more personally than I am." Then she let go, backed off a step, smiling back at the girl as though nothing were amiss.
A little bit of the light had gone out of Mission's smile, looking a little shaken, her lekku twitching just noticeably. Apparently, she hadn't expected to be caught. She nodded, one hand flicking under her chin, across her chest. Thanks, I'll be careful.
She blinked. She knew Republic Standard Sign Language. Huh.
Wait, forget her own absurd language abilities for a second, how exactly did some random Twi'leki teenager in lower city Taris pick up RSL anyway? That was—
On, no, never mind. There were plenty of alien species who had just as much trouble distinguishing the sounds in Basic listening to it, just as there were plenty who were biologically incapable of speaking it — RSL was often used by diverse communities in the Republic, usually alongside spoken Basic. (There were even a number of standard workarounds for species with unusual hand morphologies, it was a whole thing.) Not to mention, in poorer communities like this one medical interventions for deafness would be less accessible than they were elsewhere. It actually made perfect sense.
Cianen had taken a course on signing subcultures in the Republic back when she was an undergraduate. Which was how she knew all that. She'd never actually studied using it, though, that was still new.
Or, old, technically, when she thought about it.
—much you can learn about a people from their language—
—not the point, when it—
—aggressive, I know, but—
—ence of who they are far outweighs—
A warm, dull pain swam into existence, just above and in front of her ear. She shook her head to herself, the cantina swirling around her, just for a second before everything snapped back into clarity, the pain fading away. She'd decided thinking too directly about her brain stuff was a bad idea. Right.
His sense of her on the Force was undeniable. Lesami was and always had been one of those people who were simply impossible to miss. He wondered, sometimes, how it was the Jedi had found her so late. Folded within the fabric of life around him, she was a wellspring of power that could not be ignored. A burner hot to the touch, a light the eyes stung to look at.
It was one on the list of reasons the Masters were so hard on her. She made the Masters nervous. Alek thought he'd noticed before even Lesami had.
Really, with how she burned in the Force, it hadn't been hard to track her down at all. He simply wished he'd found her somewhere else. Opening his eyes showed him the same scene that'd been before him when he'd closed them — the noise and squalor of the lower city, the impoverished, lawless depths of Coruscant cast into almost cartoonish color by hundreds of argon lights, rainbow light and shadow. The concourse was crowded, the few people taking notice of him looking at his robes, the lightsaber at his waist with open mistrust and contempt, hostility rising in black spikes all around him.
And Lesami was right in front of him, only a dozen or so meters away. In an establishment advertising itself as a gameroom and bar. His impression of her light and sharp and, and...
...happy wasn't quite the right word. He recognized the feeling, yes, it was that same smug contentment that thrummed out of her through the Force whenever she solved some puzzle or another, bested someone in a duel, pulled off some new feat of semi-illicit sorcery — why Master Kreia was teaching her that stuff he'd never understand.
Alek had the very uncomfortable feeling that Lesami had snuck down to the lower city to play sabaac. And she was winning.
He took in a long breath, the air tainted with the acrid and sweet mix of industrial pollution and rotting garbage, then let it out in a long, tolerant sigh. Shuffling his uneasiness into the back of his head, Alek walked into the tight shadows of the building.
The place was dense with sentients of a dozen species, the air thick with smoke, turned into a multicolored haze by thin argon lighting, the pounding music and conversation in too many languages to pick apart. But through all of it, it was easy to pick out Lesami. Even if she didn't set the Force afire with her very presence, he'd be able to find her.
He tried to ignore the way his mouth went dry when he did.
Lesami, he knew, tended to avoid presenting herself as a Jedi during her frequent forays outside of the Temple. People treated Jedi differently, she'd said when he'd asked after it. Normal people see Jedi as heroic pseudo-deities, or delusional hermits, or superpowered tyrants, exactly what depended on their personal opinion of the Order. But they always acted different around Jedi, and not in a good way. They were always on their guard, waiting for a miracle or a threat, they could never relax.
To be honest, Alek had never really thought of that before. He and Master Zhar had had a long conversation about how Jedi should go about interacting with common people, and he still wasn't sure who was right.
He knew Lesami got up to all sorts of things out in the city a Jedi really shouldn't be involving herself in. For the most part, he'd tried to just not think about it. This was the first time he'd taken it upon himself to track her down. So he hadn't expect to find...well, this.
Lesami was sitting at one of the sabaac tables, reclining back in her chair, chin propped up on a hand. And she certainly wasn't presenting herself as a Jedi. The hair on one side of her head had been pulled out of her face into a braid, running tight against her skin before drooping down behind her ear, the other side let loose, a nest of curls and spikes, the multicolored lights flashing off black. She'd put something around her eyes, shadows glittering silver every time she blinked, her lips a deep red, he knew her face too well to think that was natural. And she wasn't wearing robes, oh no, shimmersilk in purple and black, he was trying not to look, the dress was too...
Well. By this point he was very familiar with how distracting Lesami could be.
The look of her had him frozen in shock for a moment, blinking like a juvenile idiot, before his brain finally kicked into drive again. What the hell was she doing? Honestly, some of the things Lesami did sometimes, he had no idea how she got away with—
Who was he kidding, he knew exactly how she got away with it. He should be wondering why her Master permitted her...eccentricities. He was starting to wonder if Master Kreia wasn't just as crazy as the whispers and subtle looks suggested.
But he couldn't just leave her here. He jerked into motion, pushing through the morass of sentients to stand over her. "I suppose I should have expected something like this."
Lesami tipped her head back against her chair, looking straight up at him, her face split with a crooked grin. He tried not to notice the angle down her dress he was getting. "Hello there, Master Jedi. Can I help you with something?" There was something on her voice, something subtle but sharp, he wasn't sure how to read it.
He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything there was a harsh groan of breath over his shoulder. Over his shoulder, and Alek was rather tall for a human. In an odd, snappy accent, a deep voice drawled, "Is this Jedi bothering you, Nujae?" Nujae? Alek glanced over the shoulder, nearly took a startled step back at the Herglic looming over him. He was tall even for a Herglic, Alek would have to reach up a fair ways to find his head, his shoulders as wide as Alek's arms outstretched. Peculiarly for a Herglic, mostly known as a gentle people, this one's arms were covered in nicks from blades and burns from near misses, a nasty blaster scar overtaking much of the left side of his face. He was looking at Alek with clear distrust, his wide lips curling.
Faintly, he remembered Herglics were one of the species naturally immune to manipulation through the Force. The thought didn't make him feel any less uneasy.
"It's fine, Joshal, Alek's cool. Hundred."
Alek blinked, turned back down to Lesami. She was focused on the game again, seemingly ignoring him. He didn't miss the tension in her shoulders, how the other beings at the table — Devaronians, Rodians, a bloody Mrlssi of all things — kept throwing him wary glances. "What the hell are you doing here, Lesami?"
"Careful there, Master Jedi." Lesami messed around with her cards a little bit, but he didn't know enough about sabaac to tell at a glance what was going on, and didn't truly care besides. "Cursing implies anger. If your master heard that, it might mean another lecture. Zhar Lestin," she said, leaning a little closer to a smirking Devaronian to her left. "A good man, of course, but he never shuts the fuck up, honestly."
A flash of irritation warmed his face, just for an instant, before it was washed away again. "And I suppose Kreia always keeps her thoughts to herself."
At her master's name, Lesami stilled, suddenly cold and hard, her presence in the Force too sharp to look at, the way she only got when she was truly annoyed. "I'm sure I couldn't say."
"Dammit, Lesami, stop messing around!" He could hear the anger on his own voice, but he didn't care, Lesami was just— just— "This is no place for a Jedi to be! You're coming back to the Temple with me, right now!"
The room, abruptly, went silent.
While the scarred and armed sentients all around the room glared at them, a few at the table already springing to their feet and going for blasters, outrage an instant from breaking, Lesami let out a heavy sigh. "Alek, you're a bloody idiot. You know that?"
There was shouting, accusations of cheating filling the air, plenty of rather graphic invective directed at the Jedi in general, and blasters were appearing in all directions, he could feel it on the air, they weren't letting Lesami out with whatever money she'd won. Or perhaps at all. Without thinking, an automatic response to the hostility all around them, Alek reached for his lightsaber. The movement had the more jumpy among them firing, and his eyes were dazzled with blasterfire. Even as the Force moved his arm to intercept the first shots, he abruptly realized that, with the way she was dressed, Lesami most likely didn't have her lightsaber on her.
But then, she didn't really need one.
Lesami had sprung to her feet at his side, one arm rising as the bolts fell upon them. A few of the first volley struck her directly, the fabric of her dress incinerating on contact, but she wasn't harmed. Alek could feel it, the Force burned with it, too bright, he took an unconscious step away, she was pulling the energy of the blaster shots into herself, consuming it, changing it. She slammed her hand down on the table, and the energy was released as a gout of fire, a green and blue wave roaring up toward the ceiling, white lightning crackling across the surface. When the display died down, the table had been reduced to a cracked and smoking ruin.
And the room had fallen silent again, the thugs all around them frozen with fearful awe. Or, perhaps, the simple realization that blasters were worse than useless against a Jedi like Lesami. She could be overwhelmed, of course, she could only channel so much energy at once, but they probably didn't know that.
The Order might have removed most forms of sorcery from the standard curriculum millennia ago, but Alek couldn't deny the stuff was seriously effective. Tutaminis really felt like cheating sometimes, he thought.
"Thanks for the game, but I think I should be leaving now. Before anyone gets hurt." She turned to glare at him, and Alek winced at the cold accusation in her eyes. Then she was moving, striding stiffly for the door, annoyance heavy with every step.
"Nujae!" That was the shifty-looking Herglic, thumping after Lesami with a twisted glare on his scarred face. "Don't you just be walking out. You broke the table. Those things aren't—"
Lesami whirled around, looking up at the Herglic, her expression somewhere between exasperated and amused. Plucking at her dress — Alek noticed there were a few holes in the fabric, flashes of skin underneath circled by char — she said, "They bloody shot me! You want someone to pay for the damage, get them to do it." With a final disparaging glare around the room, Lesami turned on her heel, and was gone.
Alek was only a few steps behind her. No way in hell was he hanging around in there any longer than he had to — most of the patrons hadn't even put away their blasters yet. He nearly bumped into her just out on the concourse, standing there and glaring up at him. "I suppose you think that was my fault."
"It was." Lesami held out a hand, one eyebrow ticking up. "Give me your cloak."
"What are—"
"I'm not exactly decent right now, Alek. Give me your sodding cloak."
Alek glanced down, felt his cheeks flare with heat an instant later. Glancing awkwardly to the side, Alek shrugged his cloak off his shoulders, handed it over. "Sorry."
Lesami huffed, her eyes rolling. She whipped the heavy wool around her, hugging the fabric close to herself, started off to the left without another word, quick enough he had to jump forward to catch up. "Next time you find me in the middle of a sabaac game, don't go telling the people I'm playing with I'm a Jedi. Especially not if they happen to be armed. They'll assume I'm cheating, and people don't take that lightly."
"I didn't think of that, honestly." Alek ducked around a pack of wide-eyed Duros, weaving through the crowd back to Lesami.
"Yeah, I noticed. You're an idiot like that."
His lips twitched. "So cruel, Lesami. And I thought you liked me."
"I do. Doesn't mean you're not an idiot."
"Hmm." Alek took another glance at the towers around them, his brow dropping in a frown. "Uh, the lift back to the Temple Precinct was the other way."
She shot a tight look at him over her shoulder. "I know which way the Temple is, Alek. It's late, I'm going home." Her pace hitched for a moment as she stepped into a rather rundown-looking commercial center. "Why did you come down after me anyway? Lessons for the day are surely all done by now."
"You didn't show up for lecture this afternoon. I was...concerned."
"Did the thought cross your mind that might have been on purpose?" Stepping onto a rickety turbolift, Lesami let out a low scoff, shaking her head to herself. "I swear, if I have to suffer Atris blathering on about the dangers of attachment one more time, I'll... Well, I don't know what I'll do, but I'll probably get another talking-to from Janice over it."
Alek shuffled his feet a little — he'd long ago ceased trying to get her to refer to Masters by their titles. He could count the Jedi Lesami showed the proper respect on his fingers. "This isn't a joking matter, Lesami."
"I think it is." The doors slid open, one of them creaking a little, and Lesami led them off through the hallways. Not toward the door outside, but into the maze stretching through the tower, Alek couldn't even guess where she was trying to get to. "You ever notice the irony in these silly lectures?" Lesami's voice fell, dropping into a fair imitation of Atris's low, husky drawl. She even got the Chandrillan accent mostly right. "Do not succumb to fear, for fear is of the Dark Side. And the Dark Side is bad, you should be very, very afraid of it. I can't imagine how you don't find it funny sometimes."
Listening to his best friend mock the dangers of the Dark Side wasn't making him any less uncomfortable. "Lesami..."
"You don't have to say it. I know you're trying to do that proper Jedi thing these days. That's fine, I won't try to talk you out of it. I just... I just can't, Alek." His cloak was thick enough to nearly hide the shrug of her shoulders. "It's not in me. Uncle Yuse taught me too well, I guess."
Despite himself, he couldn't help a flare of curiosity, a question about this Uncle Yuse on his lips before he suppressed it. Lesami hardly ever mentioned her family. Which was odd, considering she did have some contact with them, however minimal that contact was. "There will be consequences for this sort of thing eventually, you know. Master Kreia won't be able to protect you from the Council forever."
Stepping into yet another lift, Lesami snorted out a laugh. "What are they going to do, expel me from the Order? Oh, the horror. You might have forgotten this, Alek, but I never even wanted to be a Jedi in the first place. If my refusal to submit to their brainwashing annoys them, well, that doesn't sound like my problem, does it?"
Alek winced — luckily they weren't at the Temple, he couldn't imagine other Jedi would have taken that comment well. "The Jedi don't brainwash their members, Lesami."
"Don't they?" She stared up at him, for some unfathomable reason looking almost amused. "If it were any other institution indoctrinating and dominating its own members the way the Order does, we'd be decrying them as a dangerous, abusive cult. You should consider reading Chains of the Mind by Suvasha, you might find it enlightening."
This wasn't the first time Lesami had mentioned Entari kun si Suvasha. She was a Shawkenese political philosopher and commentator, very old, lived during the early centuries of the Republic. When Lesami had first mentioned her, he'd looked her up — the Order considered her an anarchist and an anti-Republic radical, one of the ideological pillars of the Alsakan Conflicts and certain other separatist movements over the millennia, controversial enough apprentices and padawans needed permission to access anything attributed to her in the archive. He was never sure what to think about Lesami reading her so much. "I've read critics of the Order before. Much of it is nonsense."
Lesami sniffed. "Alek, Suvasha hardly ever even mentions the Jedi in any of her work. It's just theory. I applied it to the Order on my own."
That didn't make him feel any better.
When Mission woke up, everything hurt. It was a thin, hot sort of pain, spread through every muscle head to toe, heavy and exhausting. It left her feeling weak, shivering helplessly against the hard, dirty metal of the floor. Her senses were still fuzzy, as though her head were encased in foam, her thoughts sluggish enough there might be some inside her head too. But she only needed a couple seconds, she knew what this was.
Someone had hit her with a stun bolt.
She didn't remember what happened — most people didn't when they got stunned, it was a thing. But whatever it was, it couldn't be good. With force of will, nearly more than she had to give, Mission moved, move, come on, move. She could barely wiggle at the moment, her strength was coming back so slowly, but her hands shifted enough to feel they were bound together, she couldn't tell what with.
Okay. Gonna go with definitely not good.
Her blurriness and fuzziness in her eyes and ears gradually faded away. The first thing she heard was Zee roaring and screaming, threats to rip their guts out, tear their faces from their skulls, split with curses in the names of his ancestors and his people's gods. Really nasty stuff, actually, she had no idea Zee had such a filthy mouth. And he scolded her for her language whenever she cussed even a little! She'd never heard Zee so scared before, so angry, she could feel it on his voice, as hard and sharp on the air as stepping into a distortion field.
Hearing Zaalbar in a terrified rage had her cold and shaking inside. He was frakking huge and he wasn't scared of anything. Even things he probably should be scared of. If he was losing it, they were in serious trouble.
But, she'd sort of already figured that out. Her hands were tied together. Her ankles too, she noticed when she tried to move. Yeah, not news.
There was a hissing splatter of a blaster bolt, and Zaalbar cut off with one last warbling call of her name. "Thought this one would never shut the fuck up." The voice was low, crackling, Huttese in a thick drawl.
"Better be worth the credits, hauling this thing around." This voice, sounding very Rodian, was also vaguely familiar, but she couldn't place it, like a word hidden at the edge of her tongue.
"Look at the size of him! Strong as anything I've ever seen. Buyer just has to collar him and it'll be fine, don't worry about it."
Mission's blood went even colder at the word, freezing in her veins completely, leaving her painfully stiff. Slavers. They'd been taken by slavers.
"I guess," the Rodian said, a little surly. "We going to the Exchange or the Hutts?"
"Hutts. They pay more for Twi'lek girls." Heavy, thudding steps came to a halt inches from her ear, then someone was grabbing her shoulder, fingers hard as steel, dragging her up to her feet. She wavered, still weak from the stun bolt, she would have fallen if he weren't hanging on to her.
She took a quick glance around, hoping to recognize where they were. She did, but it didn't make her feel any better. The edge of an old industrial district, mostly abandoned now, outside of a warehouse, swoop bikes and air speeders crowded around the cavernous entrance. It looked like Zee had tried to grab her and make a break for it at the last minute, they were a little ways from the pack of speeders, Zee stunned and bound on the floor just a couple feet away. She knew where this was, one of the smaller gangs had taken over the place a couple years ago. One of the nastier gangs. Rumor had it they made much of their money by snatching people, sold them to one slaver syndicate or another. It seemed the rumors were true, lucky her.
"Found us a pretty one, too." The man holding her upright, a human man with scars and pointy tattoos all over his face, was giving her a wide, toothy leer. His eyes trailed slowly downward, and Mission felt a sudden need to take a shower that had nothing to do with how filthy the floor she'd just been lying on was. "Almost seems a shame to hand her off to the Hutts without trying her out first."
"Red," the Rodian said, exasperated, "leave off. She's just a kid."
Mission bit her lip to hold in the automatic argument. If her choices were being a kid or being raped, she was picking the first one. She glanced toward the Rodian. Then stared, mouth and eyes wide, for a handful of seconds before she found her voice. "You!"
The Rodian — stang, what was his name, she knew she'd heard it — gave her a sickening glare. "Yes, little blue. Me. You cheated me out of a lot of money today."
"I don't know what you're talking about." She hoped the lie was believable, that the cringe stayed inside where it belonged. Couldn't remember his name, but she did recognize the guy, he'd been the last one she'd eliminated at the second table in the tournament. She gamed the shift a little to knock him out, same she'd had to do with Cina later. She'd thought nobody would notice, but it seemed at least two people had. And the Rodian was taking it a lot harder than Cina had.
"Don't act dumb with me, kid. I've been playing since before you were born. I know a cheat when I see it."
Mission swallowed back a retort about his age, bad timing. "You are so dead. You grabbed me in the middle of Bek territory, slime-for-brains. You don't think Gadon is going to find out?" Ooh, when Zaedra got wind of this she was going to kill him so bloody. It would be very gross. Zaerdra was scary like that.
The human let out a snorting guffaw. "Stupid little shit. Gadon doesn't rule the capital district anymore. He's on the way out. Good a way to learn as any I guess, huh?" he said to his partner in sleaze, chuckling to himself.
The Rodian didn't answer. But his snout curved in a cruel smirk.
Luckily for Mission, that was about when everything went to hell.
An airspeeder, peeling through the air so fast it squealed, zipped over their heads. Mission turned to follow it, on its careening path toward the mass of speeders outside the warehouse. So she only heard the body land and roll with a thump-click-clunk, light steps rapidly closing. The human holding her cursed, whipped her around, trying to duck behind her much smaller body, pulling his blaster from his belt. Mission caught sight of the intruder even as the shot went off, screaming over her head to carve into flesh above her, the vise holding her shoulder immediately loosening.
She gaped. Cina? It was definitely Cina, that soft-hearted off-worlder bookish type she'd run into at Javyar's (and later cheated out of hundreds of thousand of credits), a blaster in her hands and black fire in her eyes. Mission had written her off as harmless before, but she looked almost scary now, hard and cold and merciless. She'd killed that guy easy, he'd been using Mission as a shield but she'd just nailed him in the head with a single shot, snap, done. She'd been watching, Cina hadn't blinked. She hadn't even stopped moving, still running toward Mission like rakghouls were at her heels.
It was scary, but Mission wasn't scared. She felt like a balloon had gone off in her chest, her eyes were pricking with tears. They were saved. Everything would be fine.
The next instant, there was an ear-rending crash, an explosion of sparks, a roar of fire. Mission whirled around on her heel, then just stood gaping again. The airspeeder that had gone over their heads, it had smashed itself into the gang's haphazard parking lot, carving a furrow through the swoop bikes and airspeeders before just going up, taking a good fourth of the lot with it. The fire and the smoke completely blocked the warehouse entrance.
She didn't have any more time to look. Cina grabbed her by the wrists as she ran past, dragging her forward, the restraints digging into her. "Move, go, go." Mission half-hopped half-hobbled the few feet to the nearest airspeeder — Red and the Rodian's, slightly removed from the rest — and Cina yanked her down to the ground, ducking behind the frame. Sitting with her back to it, she saw that friend of hers (some human guy, didn't remember his name), dragging Zee, still unconscious, toward them by the wrists. Zee was okay. They'd be fine, they'd get out of this.
The first blaster bolts started coming from the warehouse, burning across the air, pinging against the airspeeder. She winced — assuming they didn't get killed anyway.
"Lady, are you insane?!" The man dropped Zee's wrists, moved to kneel next to her, blasters appearing in each hand. He started taking potshots over the edge, his teeth gritting so hard the veins in his neck were jumping out.
"It worked, didn't it?" Cina pulled something out from her sleeve, a narrow metal tube a little longer than her hand, and—
Mission's mouth dropped open. A lightsaber! All blue and glowing and pretty, it was a lightsaber! Cina was a Jedi! She hardly noticed Cina slicing apart the bindings around her wrists and ankles, shuffling over to do the same for Zee. She just stared in numb wonder, her head a useless fuzz. She couldn't, she was being rescued by a kriffing Jedi, she couldn't believe it, it was just—
"In case you haven't noticed, you blew up our only means of transportation — which you stole, by the way — and we're being shot at by dozens of angry gangsters! How does that spell it worked to you?!"
"I think dozens is overselling it a little." Cina jabbed a hypo into Zee's shoulder, and in the blink of an eye he was jumping to his feet, roaring in mad defiance. It only took a few blaster bolts screaming around his head for him to snap out of it, crouch down behind the airspeeder with the rest of them. "Mission, know any way we can lose them around here?"
"Ah..." Mission cringed at another volley of blaster bolts, the air nearly glowing with them, her arms rising to fold over her head on instinct. "Sure, I know a place, but we can't do it if we're all shot right away!"
Cina frowned, glancing around, her eyes flicking so quickly Mission couldn't tell what she was looking at. "Cover me."
The man scoffed. "Cover you?! What— Hey!"
Before the man could stop her, Cina was running out into the rain of blaster fire, halfway bent over, arms folded over the back of her head. He cursed, loud and long, popped over the speeder to fire off a steady stream toward the warehouse. Zee was even helping, she wasn't sure where he'd gotten a blaster from. After a short distance weaving back and forth seemingly at random, Cina dropped to her knees at Red's corpse, started fiddling with something at his belt. But Mission wasn't watching her, her gaze distracted by Zee, fumbling with the too-small grip of the blaster.
She glanced toward the back of the speeder, the compartment there. With the way the speeder was turned, there wasn't a clear angle to the warehouse from there, but it wasn't as safe as back here. A peek around the corner showed a few glowing furrows from blaster shots around the edge, sparks dancing across the floor. But she was small, she could do it. She could.
Go. Go. Go.
Mission pushed herself up on shaky knees, darted around the corner of the speeder. Keeping as far to the back side as she could, she took a quick look along the seam the compartment made in the metal; she pulled a magnet from a pouch at her belt, ran it back and forth along the center of the lip. Ah, there it was, basic maglock. No problem. She drew her probe out of her sleeve, then hesitated, just a moment, drawing in a long breath.
Turning up on her knees, facing the lock, Mission flicked the probe on, the whirr of tiny electronics hidden by the screaming of blaster fire. Her hands were shaking, it took her a few tries to work the tip into the seam, the lock weakened, she nearly dropped her knife, but she had the tip through the gap a second later, the latch should be right...
There was an ear-piercing scream of superheated air and metal, so loud her head rang, her heart nearly jumped out of her chest, sparks falling to pinch at her skin. "Frakk! Shit..." She'd slipped, the probe was out of place, she wedged it back—
"Mission!"
"Get back here, kid!"
"I've almost got it!" Even as she said it, her knife met a bit of resistance, a flick of her finger had the vibration turned on full. With a cry of shearing metal, the compartment popped open. "Yes!" She tipped up to her feet, making sure to put the door of the compartment between herself and the source of the blasterfire. There was Zee's bowcaster, his ammo belt wrapped around the haft. Oh, hey, there was her pad and holo too, couldn't leave those here. The pad slipped into her belt and the holo latched onto her wrist where it belonged, Mission wrapped both arms around Zee's ridiculously huge gun — seriously, the thing was big, she nearly tipped over into the compartment just trying to lift it.
She ducked back around the corner, just in time to catch Cina rolling over the door of the speeder to disappear inside. Ignoring how it made her arms burn and her elbows twinge, she tossed Zee his bowcaster. With a smirk that was probably far more shaky than she would like, "Am I good or what?"
Zee's furry brow dropped in a disapproving glare. "That was very dangerous, Mission." But he left it at that, loading his bowcaster with a sharp yank and a heavy clank. He tossed the blaster he had been using toward her, rose to his knees to take shots at these sleazy punks again, the heavy thrumming of his bowcaster carrying under the much higher standard blasters, shots slow and measured.
And, knowing Zee, terrifyingly precise. He was a scary good shot with that thing.
Having caught the blaster without thinking, Mission just stared at it for a moment. This was hers. How had— Oh, the Rodian must have nicked it. Never mind, not important. Mission didn't bother using it, just slipped the thing back into its holster. She wasn't that good of a shot to begin with, and with how many people they had shooting at them, her hands were still shaking, no, not worth it. "Still waiting on the plan to get us out of here."
The human man, jaw clenching so hard his neck got all weird and ridgy, paused in his seemingly random shooting to switch out power cells (which took a shockingly short amount of time, his hands moved damn fast). "I get the feeling Hayal is working on another insane plan involving explosions."
"Done." Rolling over the door again, Cina dropped down next to her, landing almost silently on the balls of her feet. Well, silently except for the clattering of her blaster and the jangling of credits, anyway. "When the speeder starts moving, run. Mission, which way are we going?"
"Ah..." Mission squinted through the smoke, turned bright and opaque by the constant blaster fire. "Right there, that tiny little storehouse right there, there's a staircase in the back."
Zee grunted. "Our nest above Eyvar's."
"Yeah, through the maintenance level. They can't get their speeders in there, and it'll be easy to lose 'em."
"You know the way, Zaalbar?" He gave Cina a nod, getting another nod back. "Good. Carry Mission." Zee just nodded again, kept shooting.
"Hey! I can—"
Cina's eyes flicked to her, and she had scary face on, all hard and too still, her eyes black, sparkling with red from reflected blaster shots. "You have shorter legs than the rest of us, and you're still weak from being stunned. You can't keep up. Zaalbar will carry you."
Mission wasn't proud to admit she might have pouted a little. How dare Cina have a good point?
A few seconds later, the speeder jolted, lifted a few inches off the ground and started sliding to the side. Leaning against it, Mission almost toppled over, she had to scramble to stay upright. The speeder moved slow at first, turning and rising another couple feet, Zaalbar and Cina and the human geezer standing upright as it moved, still firing back toward the warehouse in a steady, screaming stream. Mission jumped, pushed herself to her feet, brought her blaster up—
"Go!" Cina turned and broke into a run, whipping by Mission, the man just behind her, before she could barely blink, Zaalbar was there, ducking down, lifting her at the waist over his shoulder so quickly it drove the breath out of her lungs.
Facing backward, Mission saw the speeder suddenly take off, streaking toward the warehouse door at full acceleration. The hail of blaster shots focused on the speeder, the front end flaring a brilliant yellow, but it was moving too quick, it was too big, they wouldn't—
The speeder slammed into the wall just above the doors, then vanished in a flood of yellow and orange fire, flashing outward, consuming one figure and another, half her vision completely consumed with light and heat. The shockwave hit them a moment later, like repulsorlifts passing too close over her head, Zaalbar's loping strides faltering for just a second before picking up again, pulling ahead of the humans.
Mission turned to sneak a glance over Zaalbar's shoulder, measured the distance to the much smaller storehouse. Then she looked back, squinted through the scope of her blaster, looking for anything moving through the mass of smoke, fitfully flickering with a dozen little fires. She kept searching until metal walls blocked her vision.
She finally let the smile break across her face. There were people following them, but only a few, and they were already too far behind.
They were going to make it. They were saved.
"Are you completely insane, woman?! Are you trying to get us killed?"
Cina swallowed her mouthful of nyra juice, rolling her eyes. "Oh, settle down, Carth. It worked, didn't it?"
The exhausting man was startled out of his tirade for a second — probably because she'd actually used his first name, she didn't think she'd ever done that before. Finally, he managed, "We're lucky we got away with that. We didn't have the numbers to— Do you just like explosions, is that it?"
Her lips twitched with a smirk. "What can I say? Fire gets me hot."
"Ooohh!" Mission apparently couldn't decide if she wanted to groan or laugh. "That was terrible."
Cina winked at her. At least the girl appreciated a bad pun.
For a couple seconds, he managed to keep up a proper glare, but it quickly collapsed. He leaned back into his chair with a heavy sigh. The thing groaned with the movement, the cloth squeaking.
Zaalbar had lead them to one of his and Mission's hideouts — apparently they had a few, dotted across the capital district. This one had been an abandoned apartment, smaller than the one she and Onasi had claimed, a single little room and a fresher she'd initially mistaken for a closet. They'd filled the place out, with torn and creaky furniture, bits of electronic equipment stacked all over the place, only about a third of which Cina actually recognized, little figurines Zaalbar had apparently whittled out of plastic, string lights hung all over the walls, the ceiling.
As much as Carth complained about the lack of floorspace when he'd first seen it, Cina thought it was surprisingly homey. She had to wonder if all their places were as nice as this one.
"I just wish we would talk things out before you, just, do it." Oh, right, Carth was still complaining. "I mean, that was very risky. I still think we should have tried going to these Beks. They probably would have helped, given us better odds at least."
Cina shook her head. "Bad idea. We had to stay on them the whole time, or we might have lost them. And those were slavers — by the time the Beks could round up the blasters needed to hit that warehouse, Mission and Zaalbar might have been long gone."
Carth opened his mouth to argue, but Mission got there first. "She's right. I bet they'd only stopped to move us to a bubble speeder. The Hutts are a few levels up, there are cameras there. By the time you got back we'd be gone, you'd never have found us again." A shade of fear crossed Mission's face at the thought, but she recovered quickly. She'd been shaky during the shooting, but she was much better now, already smirking and joking. Tough kid.
"Fine! Fine, I give up. Next time you have a completely insane plan, I'll just sit back and not say anything."
She smirked. "Good boy."
Just as Carth finished his grumbling, the hallway door slipped open, and Zaalbar shuffled inside, gently closing and locking the door behind him. He probably had to do everything gently, considering how naturally strong Wookiees were. He hung his bowcaster on a nearby hook, a low groan emanating from the beleaguered plastic. Which also wasn't a surprise, those things were bloody heavy — honestly, Cina was a little impressed Mission had even managed to lift it. In a warbling, guttural growl, he said, "I canvassed the whole square. We were not followed."
Mission scoffed. "Of course we weren't followed. They lost us before we even left Khunas."
"Yes," he agreed, something to the rumble of his voice sounding reluctant, "but I would prefer to err on the side of caution, in this matter."
"Oh, I ain't arguing there. Did I try to stop you going out to check? Take no chances dealing with slavers, hundred percent. If we hadn't had a kriffing Jedi swoop in to save us like a hero in a terrible holodrama, we'd have been so, well, it would have been bad. Very bad." Mission turned back to Cina, expression solemn and eyes clouded, more serious-looking than she thought she'd ever seen the excitable girl. "Thanks for that, by the way. We owe you like a million." Zaalbar grumbled in agreement, shaggy head nodding.
But Cina just stared back, slowly blinking. She glanced at Carth, but he looked far too amused. A dark sort of amusement, she guessed, a crooked smirk that hinted at far too much experience with crazy Jedi, but she didn't see what about this was so funny. Finally, she found her voice again. "I'm not a Jedi."
Mission rolled her eyes. "Uh-huh. Sure."
"No, really, I'm not a Jedi." At least, she didn't think she was a Jedi — she had no idea what she was, her head being the confusing fucked up mess it was, but she was pretty sure she would have noticed if she had reality-bending magic powers.
Jedi might deny what they did was magic, but come on, it was obviously magic. She was pretty sure they just didn't like the word. It sounded too primitive and undignified. Which should come as no surprise, they were self-important arses like that.
But anyway, having a conversation here. "What the hell makes you think I'm a Jedi anyway?"
Mission gave her an annoyed look, silently telling her to quit the act, her playing dumb was just irritating. "Uh, you swooped in to rescue two practical strangers from being sold into slavery in a poorly thought-out rush that involved explosions and running through blaster fire like a crazy person. Also? You have a kriffing lightsaber!" Her voice had risen almost to a shout, pointing an accusing finger at her.
Letting out a sharp, shocked bark of laughter, Carth said, "She's got you there, Cianen. Only a Jedi could pull that kind of shit and expect to come out alive."
"Son of a— Honestly, Mission, I'm not a Jedi. This," she said, tapping the hilt of the lightsaber hidden under her shirt, "wasn't mine. The Jedi it belonged to is dead." A look of shock crossed Mission's face. "I didn't kill her!" Well, she had killed her, technically, but Annas would have died anyway. Cina had just cut her suffering short. "She gave it to me. I don't know why, Jedi are weird. But, point is, I'm not a Jedi."
"I don't know, you could be. It's not impossible. We really have no idea who you were before." Because this was the perfect moment for Carth to tell Mission and Zaalbar about her exciting adventures in brain damage.
"What do you mean, who she was before?" Mission glanced between the two of them, face scrunched with an adorable little frown.
Cina shot Carth a hooded glare. Not helping. "Fine, so far as I am aware, I am not a Jedi."
That just made Mission frown harder. "That doesn't make any sense."
"Tell me about it."
Zaalbar, still looming over them a few steps inside the door, stared at Cina, dark eyes uncomfortably heavy. "You...are not a Jedi?"
It took a second for Cina to figure out what he was saying. Wookiees couldn't pronounce Jedi, of course — he'd literally said something about warriors and souls and vines, it was confusing. "Oh. No, no I'm not."
"And you are not with any security force, or sworn to serve the Republic. Or anything of the like."
"No?" That didn't sound like something she would have done, anyway... "Carth is Republic, but I'm not. What does that matter?"
Zaalbar stared at her for another moment. Tense and still, an odd sense of intensity almost seeming to radiate out of him. His black gaze tracked to Mission, only for a second, before flicking back to her. "You rescued the two of us from a horrible fate, at no small risk to yourself. You did this despite being under no obligation to do so, with no expectation of repayment of any kind."
Distantly, her inexplicable knowledge of Wookiee culture filling in the blanks, Cina felt her eyes widen and her lips part a sliver — she knew where this was going. Mission caught it just as she did, straightening in her chair. "Woah, Zee, wait up a sec—"
"I have no choice, Sister. My honor is already too far blackened for me to sully it once again." His voice turned deeper, the subtle sense of formality always apparent in his speech turning almost poetic. "I owe you my life, friend. The spirits of our ancestors be witness, I will follow you through sky and through shadow until my debt be paid."
Cina opened her mouth, intending to tell him to keep his debt, she didn't want it. But then she froze, cursing silently. She couldn't refuse. Well, she could — there was plenty of precedent for a Wookiee rejecting a life-debt, their law accounted for it — but she shouldn't. The Wookiees were a primitive tribal people, and they took their concept of honor very, very seriously. Most Wookiees considered their honor to be more valuable than their lives. Zaalbar was correct in that there were no extenuating circumstances Cina was aware of that would invalidate the debt, not according to their own law. Cina could theoretically get one of their lawspeakers to find a loophole for her, if she really wanted to get out of it, but they didn't exactly have one of those on hand.
Refusing a legitimate debt would be an insult. Essentially, she would be telling Zaalbar his life wasn't valuable enough for him to repay her for preserving it. There were very few things more insulting. By the look of him, Zaalbar was still rather young for his species, in the equivalent of his teenage years. She had no idea exactly how much refusing him would hurt him, but it wouldn't be good.
And besides, there could be benefits to having him along. He was a very good shot with that bowcaster of his, she'd noticed, and by the way he talked he was a rather thoughtful, intelligent sort. And, if he was comfortable considering Mission family, she probably felt much the same — getting her on-side could be a massive boon in tracking down Shan, given her skill with slicing.
And it would only be for a little while. A Wookiee life-debt was not forever — they would be joined together until Zaalbar felt the aid he gave Cina surpassed what she had done for him. With how dangerous recovering Shan and getting off the planet was bound to be, that shouldn't even be very long.
Suffocating the last traces of her reluctance, Cina dug for the proper response. She couldn't pronounce the language, of course, but she could translate the ritual words easily enough. "I accept your vow, friend. The spirits of our ancestors be witness, I will lead you through sky and through shadow until your heart by free."
Zaalbar seemed a little surprised she knew exactly what to say — at least, she thought he was, Wookiee body language was tricky. But he nodded and, without another word, turned to fiddle with the equipment stacked in a row by the door. Preparing dinner, by the look of it.
Well. That was that, then.
"Okay," Carth said in a low drawl, "what the hell was that about?"
"Zee just swore Cina a life-debt." There was an obvious note of awe to Mission's voice — clearly, she'd picked up a bit over however many years she and Zaalbar had been together. "Which, which is huge. You get that, right, Cina? 'Cause, if you hurt Big Zee, I'm gonna..."
Cina couldn't help smiling a little at the threat. "Yes, Mission, I get it." Better than she did, probably. Not that Cina had any idea how she knew so much about Wookiee tribal law. "Don't worry, I'll mind myself about him."
Even with that paltry reassurance, Mission was bursting into a bright grin. Though, maybe she'd just been thoroughly convinced by this point of the purity of Cina's intentions — she had, after all, done nothing about Mission swindling her out of hundreds of thousands of credits, then showed up out of nowhere to save herself from the consequences of her own actions. By this point, Mission probably thought she was...well, as she'd put it, a hero in a terrible holodrama.
It was a little amusing, actually. It wasn't so long ago, shooting her way out of the Spire, that Cina had had the same thought herself.
"Well, wherever Zee goes, I go. So I guess you're stuck with me too."
Cina's smile tilted a little into a teasing smirk. "Somehow I'll survive."
"You've got to be kidding me." Despite the disbelief in his words, the tone of Carth's voice was far more defeated, a final gasp of resistance before surrender. "Unless you forgot, Professor, we have a job to do here. We can't rescue Bastila and babysit street kids and thieves at the same time."
"Hey! Watch who you're calling kid!"
Cina snorted. "Not disputing the thief part, I see."
Mission's lekku shifted in a smooth shrug. "You don't know me, old man. I got mad skills, just you watch. You got something you need decrypted, or a system you gotta slice into, or data you gotta filter, or—"
"Actually, Mission, I have a job I think you might be perfect for." That had the girl cutting off immediately, shooting her another grin; the contrast against Carth's dour glare just made it seem all the more brilliant. "As you might have guessed by now, we were with the Republic fleet the Sith crushed in orbit a couple days ago."
Her nose scrunched up again in adorable confusion. Twi'leks did tend to be cute, of course, it was completely unfair. "I thought you said you weren't with the Republic."
"I'm not. I was hired by the Jedi to translate the inscriptions on some old ruins they found, long story." It was a long story not even getting into the fact that she was convinced the entire thing about the ruins had been some convoluted front to get her to Dantooine for reasons she couldn't begin to guess at. "Carth is Republic, though. This stick-in-the-mud is kind of famous, actually, look up his name later.
"Anyway, out of the goodness of my heart—" Carth coughed. "—I decided to help Captain Onasi here track down his commanding officer. One Jedi Knight Bastila Shan." By the way Mission's eyes nearly popped out of her skull, that name she'd definitely heard before. "We know she got off the ship, on one of the escape pods. We're hoping she made it to the surface alive, and is still around somewhere. If you could find her somehow, that'd be a big help. Maybe the cameras caught her at some point, or if someone found her there might be chatter on the net..."
"I'll do you one better. I just realized, maybe she..." Mission pulled out her datapad, poked around on it for a little bit. There was a blue flicker at her wrist, and a mobile holoprojector sparked into life, a half life-size image forming in the middle of room. "I didn't think of it before, but, that's Bastila, isn't it?"
It was a still image, showing three figures. Two of them, a Kajain'sa'Nikto and a human, were armed to the teeth, with pistols and rifles and layered in expensive-looking armor. Decorated, she noticed, with Black Vulkar insignia. Between them was a human woman, a shock collar tight around her neck and what looked like a high-grade neural disruptor around her temples, her wrists bound with plastic cuffs. She'd been forced into something black and tight and revealing — it might as well be lingerie, really — faded traces of bruises and scrapes from being rattled around during reentry still visible.
The human gangster, a dark-skinned man with a wicked smile, had a hand clenched around her jaw, turning her face to the camera. The way she was dressed was so severely out of character it would be funny in a less exploitative context, but there was no mistaking who she was.
Cina didn't think she'd heard Carth swear quite that loudly before. It was almost impressive.
Sabaac — The deck and the rules have been slightly changed from canon. Partially for balance, partially to make the strategy involved more complex and interesting. It's not super important, I won't be going over it in detail.
I did play with the names of the cards slightly, mostly to realign their meanings with the major arcana they were copied from. Balance, for example, is obviously supposed to be Justice, but the direct meaning is too off for my liking, especially in a culture that might have completely forgotten what balance scales even are. Moderation was also changed back to Temperance. (Just because "moderation" is used in the dictionary definition doesn't mean the words are interchangeable.)
Sabaac cards — They are essentially static displays, since they have to change. But in some media, I see creators conclude this means they have to be firm, hard plastic -like things. Uh...no? Some tech person with nothing better to do with their time could theoretically make randomizable, flexible playing cards right now, using OLEDs on a rubbery plastic substrate (probably some kind of polyethylene) with minimal embedded bluetooth (or similar local wireless protocol). Getting it to spring back like cardboard would be more difficult, but this is new materials science to us. You're telling me a hyper-advanced space-faring society like the one in Star Wars couldn't come up with something much more efficient and durable? Please. They're a thousand times easier to implement than fucking holograms.
Yes, I realize I think far too hard about this stuff.
sorcery — Headcanon: sorcery, like alchemy, is a method of using the Force, not necessarily Light or Dark. Sith sorcery and alchemy are far more well-known in the modern day, but the Jedi did once practice their own Light Side forms of the arts. They'd both been abandoned over the millennia Jedi have existed, though, for philosophy reasons that will come up later. Most Jedi never even learn about them, to the point few are aware some standard abilities like tutaminis and most forms of healing are technically sorcery.
Whew. Finally.
Yes, I'm streamlining the Taris sequence significantly. I personally don't like it much, so I decided to cut out a lot of the random wandering around and backtracking and get right to the point. Taris should only take a few more chapters, in fact, and we'll be moving on.
Until next time,
~Wings