Private A Kid In a Toy Store

[Arlo Renard]

Red fingers with long nails painted black frantically punched buttons on a datapad screen, dialing out a number. The Devaronian girl was immediately put through to a droid operator—or, well, a recording of a droid operator. Grumbling, she jiggled her leg impatiently as she waited for the actual operator to pick up.

“Yeah, hi—could you put me through to the, uh...” Something caught her eye and she quickly ducked behind the aisle, glancing precariously around the corner. Her voice dropped considerably in volume, whispering the rest of her sentence. “... the Jedi Temple?”

More ringing as she drummed her nails against one of her horns. The Jedi finally picked up.

“Hi, this is Lili from Toys”R”Us,” she said, in a tone which was as far from what one would expect from a toy store employee as possible. “I’m just calling to tell you that, uh… there’s a guy in here wearing your uniform jacket, the one with the New Jedi Order insignia on it. He’s been wandering around our store for over an hour, and he—”

She broke off at the sound of something crashing elsewhere in the store. Once her cringe had faded enough that she could speak again, she finished, “He has been causing a disturbance in our store. We don’t know who he is or where he came from, but the uniform seemed like the best bet.”

A pause. “He’s human as far as I can tell, tall, dark hair, blue eyes… maybe in his early twenties? No, he hasn’t hurt anyone. He’s just been knocking stuff over, mostly. Acts like he’s never been in a toy store before…” Although if he was a Jedi, that might indeed be the case. Weren’t they supposed to be weird warrior monks? Probably weren’t allowed to play as kids.

She fell completely silent as the young man in question appeared in her line of sight, turning the corner around a shelf stacked with pop detonators. Catching her staring, he gave her a sheepish wave, then continued on his merry way, presumably to wreck more of the store. She heaved a sigh.

“I did call the police, but they told me to call you. They can’t deal with crazed Jedi on the loose, if that’s what this guy is. I can’t deal with it either. So if you could, like, send somebody down here, a Jedi or whatever, just to be sure…?”

Aeris Lashiec​

 

[Aeris Lashiec]

Arlo Renard

Soft, pale fingers wrapped around the communicator with a long exasperated sigh. If there was trouble with someone that was described to look as Dagon, and sounded like Dagon, when Dagon was on an entirely different planet, then it most likely was not Dagon but his doppelganger being up to no-good again. While it worried Aeris that he had somehow managed to get out of the temple, she still stood to be able to salvage this somehow. She just needed to take care not to upset the young sithspawn in their midst.

As she arrived at the scene she was met with a Devaronian giving her an anxious and rather impatient stare. Aeris gave her a smile in return as the blonde locks of her hair brushed against her cheeks in the recycled wind gusts of Coruscant’s surface.

“Hi, I am here about the—”
“Idiot amongst the Treicolt-brand dolls?”
“Ye—” Aeris paused for a moment in surprise and worry that such a thing even existed. “Yes.”
“Well, he’s only gone through half of our shelves at this point. What’s a few more hours of work anyway?”
“I appreciate your patience.”
“Whatever.”

With cautious steps around the place, Aeris began to look between each of the shelves that she passed by on her way into the store.

“Kai?” Her voice was soft, gentle. “Are you here?”

 

[Arlo Renard]

Kai was seated on the floor, a video game controller in his hands. His fingers frantically worked the buttons at superhuman speed, his eyes glued to the holoscreen. Beside him was fellow player Oona Tokk, an eight year old Neimoidian girl in a pink and white dress and flowery flip flops.

Oona’s mother and another store employee lingered close by, watching. The former had reluctantly permitted the latter to use her daughter as a distraction, hoping to keep Kai preoccupied in the electronics section until help arrived. For her part, Oona had no idea she was being used as bait in a trap, and was mainly concerned with preventing Kai from entering into a PvP match with her, for while he was wonderful to have as a playmate in co-op, he would probably make her cry in multiplayer. Oona did not want to cry in front of a Jedi. It would wound her dignity too deeply.

At the sound of Aeris calling his name, Kai’s head jerked. Uh oh. He quit the game and set the controller aside.

“No wait, hang on just a minute—” the employee began, holding up his hands as if to try and physically stop Kai from leaving.

But Kai had already disappeared.

“How did he do that?” Oona’s mother asked in disbelief. “Is it a Jedi thing?”

Her answer came in the form of rattling from a nearby aisle, as an invisible Kai accidentally knocked a Treicolt doll off a shelf, panicked, knocked over something else, then dove head-first into a ball pit out of sheer desperation, hiding from view among the multicolored orbs.

Aeris Lashiec​

 

[Aeris Lashiec]

Arlo Renard

There really was no good way of saying that there was a potentially dark creature playing pretend inside of their store, so Aeris simply elected to say nothing at all. At least not as far as specifics went. As Kai darted off further into the store, Aeris merely turned around towards the store attendant and raised her hand to ease her worries with absolutely no success.

“It is, and it is not. Jedi are known for many things, speed being one of them.” She sighed and shook her head. “Not to worry, I will have my friend here out of your hair as fast as I can.”

The attendant didn’t jump for joy, there was no resolution to the problem yet. The eight year old Neimodian and her mother slowly stepped away towards the exit and Aeris gave them a grateful smile before she turned around to look around the store for her shapeless friend. Or well, hypothetically shapeless. He had shape, it was just a shape that by many accounts simply wasn’t his own.

The force bellowed from the ball pit and Aeris saw little reason to doubt that was indeed where Kai had gone. Her eyes wandered over the shelves to take in the plastic toys on the store. Maybe in some alternate life these would have meant more to her, but such wasn’t the case. She saw plastic figurines and wooden blocks with letters on them. Hydraulic powered claw machines and some sort of blaster contraption.

For a moment she worried about the lack of imagination these kids would grow up with in comparison to her own childhood that delved deep into the realm of books, but then perhaps with these tools, the kids could create their own story without need of a single word to begin with.

… The thought was almost entrancing in and of itself, but she was here for a reason and she’d do well not to delay.

“Kai.” She said and squatted down by the edge of the ball pit. “I know you are in there, you know.”

She waited for a moment before she dropped the one line that usually worked on the younglings, “I am not angry, I just need to talk to you for a moment.”

 

[Arlo Renard]

Kai waited with bated breath for Aeris to pass, but she did not. Instead her footsteps approached the edge of the pit, and he heard her speak directly to him, knowingly.

Found out, Dagon’s doppelganger slowly emerged, colorful balls rolling off of him as he sat up. There was his head, hair slightly mussed; there was the NJO jacket swathing a superhero physique. A weapon of war in a children’s ball pit.

<I didn’t mean to go here.>

Kai was looking down rather than at Aeris, too embarrassed to meet her gaze, but he still directed his telepathic communication her way.

<I got chased and then stuck.>

The accompanying memories he shared revealed a daring escape from the Temple, sticking to the shadows of Coruscant, witnessing something he was not meant to see—and being forced to flee and hide from pursuers that came after him from out of the dark. This seemed like the last place they would look. The fact that he had become sidetracked, fascinated by the contents of the store, was an unforeseen consequence.

<Didn't mean to make a mess. Sorry. Not all of it was me—someone else started it. Sorry.>

Aeris Lashiec​

 

[Aeris Lashiec]

“Hey, I believe you.” Aeris said and shrugged her shoulders as she remained squatted before the mirror image of her friend. “Though it will be hard to explain the circumstances of this to the others.”

Her eyes glanced over her shoulder at the Devaronian that had slowly begun to put some of the Treicolt-brand action figures back on their appropriate shelves again with a frustrated glance over at Aeris who looked away once their gazes met.

“It’s all right, we will make sure to fix this, but we have to go back.” Aeris frowned and extended a hand for Kai to grab if he wanted to get up again. “Just have to unruffle some feathers with the store clerk. Maybe try and help put things back where they once were again.”

“Come on, up we go.”

Arlo Renard

 

[Arlo Renard]

Kai clambered out of the ball pit. Still avoiding Aeris’ gaze, he glanced toward the Devaronian.

<Sorry. I can help put things back.>

The she-devil reacted to the telepathic communication as though she were wearing an earpiece that had screeched due to interference. She cringed, then glared at him.

“Fine.”

They commenced the cleanup.

Aeris Lashiec​

 

[Aeris Lashiec]

Arlo Renard

The shame meant that he knew that he had done something he wasn’t meant to do at least. While his continued desire to not look at her was something that bothered her greatly, she made no point to cause a fuss over it. Shame be as shame do. For a moment she even got a glimpse into what it was like to observe what it was like when one person spoke through mental images and the other through spoken word. Aeris was taken aback and thought back to when she had led Kai through the library.

… Yeah, that must have been… It must certainly have been something.

“I have no means of offering compensation for damages at the moment,” Aeris said and raised her hand. With her input, the force grasped at a few of the items on the ground to put some of them back onto their appropriate shelves. “I will leave you the details to our clerks who deal with these things.”

“That won’t give me back my evening, lady.” The Devaroanian huffed and continued to pick up a set of stuffed Teddy Ewoks whose fur looked suspiciously authentic. The attendant groaned and shook her head with a deep sigh. “Put the number on the counter, I’ll give them a call after we’re done here.”

Aeris gave her a slow nod.

“Hey, Kai.” She said and approached the kid. “Was there anything in particular that piqued your interest here?”

 

[Arlo Renard]

Kai blinked. Was she offering to give him something? Did this mean she wasn’t angry with him? Well, she did say she wasn’t angry, but did she really mean it?

He struggled to answer her question. The turning of wheels in his head was interrupted by a stuffed Ewok bouncing off his cranium, tossed at him by the Devaronian. He resumed cleaning up, filling his arms with knocked over toys to be returned to the shelves.

<Just a holovid projector.>

He had mentioned to her before that he wanted one in his room, and the store sold them.

Aeris Lashiec​

 

[Aeris Lashiec]

Arlo Renard

Ah, well, he had definitely mentioned the holovid projector before. Aeris put on a thoughtful frown for a moment as she continued to place displaced products back on their shelves. While she couldn’t afford or much care to buy such a thing for Kai herself, on account of being a notorious free-range text consumer, she could definitely see about talking to the rest about improving conditions for the people they had jailed.

“I will talk to the Order when we get back.” Aeris said as her lips thinned in concern. “We might not be able to provide, but I will try my best.”

Attention set on the Devaronian with a frown.

“Miss,” Aeris cleared her throat. “What would a holovid projector cost?”

The Devaronian looked at the Jedi Knight with a frustrated grimace.

“Lady, do I LOOK like I know or care about the prices in this place?” She asked and huffed. “Go check, I just work here.”

 

[Arlo Renard]

The look on Aeris’ face in reaction to his request for a video game console made Kai despair. Not that he had actually thought she might get him a holovid projector, but it was a bitter reminder that she was an entertainment vegan who thought books were the only form of leisure worth anyone’s time.

Still, she was nice enough to offer to ask the Order about it. The Devaronian wasn’t being cooperative, however.

Kai closed his eyes, sifting through the murk of employees’ minds.

<Three hundred credits.>

The Devaronian threw another stuffed Ewok at him. He caught it, then opened his eyes and glared at her.

<Why are you so mean?>

“Because I’m tired and want to go home, and your little misadventure in this store is preventing me from doing so.”

<I said I was sorry.>

“Sorry isn’t going to stock these shelves.”

Taking up the challenge, Kai began a speedrun through the store, aggressively cleaning up his mess at an accelerated rate.

Aeris Lashiec​

 

[Aeris Lashiec]

Arlo Renard

“Hm?” Aeris peeked up from behind a display and looked over at the clerk whose attention seemed to be on Kai. “Oh.” She sighed and continued fixing with the leg of the display. Not that there was all that likely of a chance that Kai had broken it, but given the fervor with which Kai decided to clean up…

Aeris rubbed at her neck and glanced over at the clearly frustrated teenager.

“Far from my business to tell you how to treat peo-” Aeris tried.

“Pretty damn far.” The teenager cut her off. “I had plans, and now they’re ruined because of you.”

“That.. Thing, better get their damn video console, lady. Keep him the hell out of my store.”

“I will see what I can do.” Was all Aeris could offer along with a disappointed headshake as she approached Kai. “Come on,” She said and motioned for him. “We should probably report this to the others.”

Besides, the shop looked at least serviceable.