Private Birds of a Feather

[Kai Bamarri]

The potential for innuendo in her words went sailing over Kai’s head.

<I don’t know where his room is, but I can find out.>

By this he meant taking the information from someone’s memories. He was, after all, a mind eater.

Buzzed by the caf, he nodded along in acknowledgement of her words, then stood up and hurried over to the vent, only looking back at Damsy when he was on the verge of slithering inside.

<Should we do it now? Or—can you fit in here?>

How’s that for innuendo.

He of course was asking if she could crawl through the vents without getting stuck. Kai himself had to slim down, but then Dagon was quite a bit broader and taller than Damsy. If it proved too tight a fit, he could always find a way to unlock her door from the other side.

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

The enthusiasm came rather unexpected, caf or nay. She pushed up off her knees after Kai had passed her by, then followed him to the vent. "N-no time like the present."

With a pause, she cast a hesitant glance towards her cramped bedroom. I'll be back soon, she thought, not quite telepathic, before reaching out to Keziah with the calmest energy she could muster. Dim light filtering down near impossible depths onto the muddy seabed.

The next moment, she joined Kai closer to the outlet. "I can fit, yeah." Just might take a minute getting used to, she added to herself. Having a skeleton made entirely of cartilage rarely afforded her any sort of benefit on land that outweighed its drawbacks, but this particular situation was the exception. "Lead the way."

Before shuffling down the vent after Kai, she closed her eyes and focused to kick out the energetic stands bracing up her legs. All sorts of flexibility then; not great for load-bearing her own weight whilst upright, let alone actively moving, but perfectly good for slithering. Just like swimming in a lot of ways.

Kai Bamarri

 

[Kai Bamarri]

Kai emerged from a grate outside the cell block, having burned through the screws holding it in place with acid. He crawled out on all fours initially, waiting for his body to readjust before he rose to his feet.

It was a nice empty storage room, out of the way of prying eyes. He stepped out of the way, waiting for Damsy to come out, while he hunted for a mind that knew where Dagon’s room was. He had thought it would be harder, but in a rather short amount of time, Kai found a young woman within the Temple who knew exactly where it was.

Turning to Damsy, he held out a hand to help her to her feet.

<I know where his room is now.>

Still holding her hand—unless she were to let go—he led her through the doors and into the flow of traffic through the Temple. It was nowhere near as crowded as it had been in the golden age of the Jedi, but there were plenty of passerby along the way. A few gave Kai smiles, waves, or good mornings. The doppelganger responded in kind. They all thought he was Dagon.

Upon reaching the Padawan’s quarters, however, he realized they had no key with which to open the door. One corner of his mouth turning up in a disappointed smirk, Kai exhaled, ruffling the hair over his forehead.

<Through the vents again. Unless you have a better idea?>

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

She took his hand, and murmured after nodding at his news, “Hold up,” then took a moment to stretch her legs as a runner would. With the bending of each leg at the location where humanoids had knees, the cartilage vertebrae of those sections of spine above and below cracked into place - back to emulating actual bone; femur, tibia, and fibula.

Still, she swayed as Kai pulled her out into the hallway by the hand, not due to any fault of his but her own body readjusting to a vertical orientation. She nodded to the passerbys that greeted him as well. She had surely seen some of them in the last hours, though she didn’t quite remember any of the faces; thus, Dagon leading the woman he had most recently brought to the Temple around raised no brows either.

What did they think of her? Expect a new Jedi prospective?

Hah.

When the sithspawn came to the real Dag’s locked door, Damsy sighed too. She wasn’t keen on unhinging her body again so soon. Though it was quite a bit less painful than a full metamorphosis, it still was not one of her few pastimes.

Any other ideas? Oceans, she could have brought Kezi, but she’d settle for her rudimentary command of the Force. “If you get the grate, I think I can find them in the empyrean.”

Another Jedi term. They were useful, but rarely slid off the tongue.

Kai Bamarri

 

[Kai Bamarri]

Kai found the grate a little further down the hall. Stooping, he jammed a finger into the crack, secreting acid to burn away each of the screws until it was free, then crawled inside.

He found the grate leading to Dagon’s room and did the same. After a moment’s hesitation, he slid out, standing upright and looking around curiously. These quarters did not look lived in. Perhaps Dagon spent most of his time away from the Temple, maintaining these rooms only for when it was necessary to stay there?

He mentally nudged Damsy.

<I’m ready when you are.>

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

Damsy crouched in front of the main grate. She closed her eyes and reached out - physically to place a hand against the cool metal and energetically into the room beyond. A sea of blue-tinged outlines unfolded on the backs of her eyelids, all painting a sparse but quaint living arrangement. Or, maybe as Kai observed, maybe not quite. Not one piece of furniture was out of place, somewhat the opposite of his underworld apartment. It really didn’t appear like anyone lived here, at least not often.

Damsy stepped metaphysically through the room, scanning for her keys. She found them on an end table near the door, thankfully alone. Easy to snatch - nothing to accidentally knock over. Marginally harder to retrace her steps back towards the air vents, then through them. Every step felt as if she was suddenly dragging her own body in dead weight though the few fobs on her keyring did not collectively weigh much at all.

Finally, they landed in her physical hand and her aura returned in earnest to her body. She stood, looking to Kai. “Next stop, Level 1997.”

Kai Bamarri

 

[Kai Bamarri]

Kai followed the floating keys back into the vents like a cat chasing a laser pointer, only remembering to replace the grates behind him at the last second. He emerged on the other side to find Damsy holding them, and he smiled.

<Okay good, okay fine.>

He led her to the Temple’s nearest exit. The matter of transportation presented another obstacle.

<Should we take a speeder?>

It would be stealing, which always opened the door for questions and suspicions from others. Kai shrugged.

<I usually just grapple around the city. I could take you with me, although I’ve never done it with anybody else before...>

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

Her eyes widened.

Grapple?

She hadn't done that in ages - since about her time with the Dauntless. Nothing like getting back to basics.

And, plus, a missing set of keys would go quiet longer than an entire speeder. Or, so she assumed.

"Don't worry, learning curve. I'll hold tight," Damsy promised. If she proved too heavy after a few blocks or levels, she could always try out that one Power she had always wanted to but never quite learned: Force Jump.

Kai Bamarri

 

[Kai Bamarri]

<Okay good, okay fine.>

This was apparently his favorite catchphrase.

Kai led Damsy to the edge of the platform, then glanced around. Nobody was looking. Holding out his arm, he stretched a thumb-sized portion of his own flesh until it extended out to the opposite building and coiled around something.

He gave it an experimental tug, then moved the fleshy wire’s connection from his arm to his middle so that it could better support his center of mass. It wasn’t all that different from a grappling hook tied to a utility belt—but then it also looked vaguely reminiscent of an umbilical cord. Minus any sliminess, of course. It was just skin.

Kai didn’t seem in the least bit aware of how strange this was. Quite the contrary—his next words were confident and assured.

<Wrap your arms around my neck. Not my chest, or you’ll slide off.>

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

A sithspawn - any sithspawn - wasn't the best judge of weird or otherwise macabre.

They all, to some variation or another, fit each of those denotations. But, when the entirety of your 'kind' was not exactly your kind - that is, each weird and macabre in a unique way - strange became the new normal, regardless of how often you encountered other spawn. For Damsy, though, she had grown up seeing much, much stranger than Kai and surely herself at the bottom of Kamino's sea, and in such gotten used to not batting an eye at it. Foggy eyes, bioluminescence, amorphous bodies, blubber, lateral lines had become the telltale characteristics of her family.

Sith alchemy did not hold a match to natural evolution sans light.

Coming to the surface half a lifetime ago had easily turned around those beauty standards - but only to herself, not to other spawn like Kai.

She regarded his particular ability like how she might a new combat rifle: with deeply-permeating enthusiasm. Seeing him do his thing felt more like home than she could hope to say. In fact, she found herself wiping at her eyes. The start of freshwater tears.

"Right."

She took hold around his neck.

Kai Bamarri

 

[Kai Bamarri]

Once Damsy was secured, Kai’s feet left the ledge. The initial gut-wrenching sensation of no longer having anything solid beneath you passed quickly for him. He maneuvered through the starscrapers and skyways with relative ease, limiting the scope of his inhuman acrobatics only to ensure Damsy didn’t lose her grip. Clearly he’d had practice, though the basis of it was from stolen memories belonging to Dagon, another grapple enthusiast.

<Level 1997 is this way, right? Where’s your apartment?>

He’d never been there before during his nightly explorations. Coruscant looked different in the daylight.

Depending on her answer, he swooped down in whichever directions she indicated, alighting at last near the entrance to her apartment.

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

Damsy hadn't flown so unrestricted before. Of all the stupid stunts that she had gotten away with during her Dauntless tenure, the surface of this experience remained ungrazed. Not because the fancy to hang down off a seat in a transport's open doors, or down an enemy starfighter by jumping on its wing and blasting its pilot, or the dangerous like had never hit her, but because the possibility of scaring Luna Terrik too much had scared her more than the risk of falling to certain death.

She likewise was a bit lost too; Coruscant looked different from the ground. Finally, though, she spotted a landmark. "Yeah," she answered, about to retract a hand to point until she realized she had better not do so. "It's right at this upcomin' cantin' sign."

As soon as they were on the ground, Damsy let them into her apartment. She muttered, "Mind the eyes," as she switched on the lights before disappearing around the entryway corner to the left. If Kai was to move into the living room and look in the direction she had gone, she could be plainly seen in her bedroom, kneeling at and shuffling through the closet. "I'm gonna arm myself just in case. You need anything?"

Intuition told her that he might like her dartgun, with his acid and all.

Kai Bamarri

 

[Kai Bamarri]

Kai stepped cautiously into the living room of Damsy’s apartment, looking around curiously. He soon became fascinated by the kitchen, with its cheap appliances—he had never seen a proper home kitchen before outside of the memories of others, and that was no way to experience life. Damsy called out to him before he could fiddle with any buttons.

<I don’t think I’m supposed to have weapons.>

That didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t open to the idea. He just didn’t know where to start when it came to weapons. How many should he have at one time, given that he was a being who could grow extra arms at the drop of a hat? What kinds of weapons should he use? It seemed complicated, and he wasn’t overly fond of things that were complicated.

<You find something extra for me, I'll take it. Okay?>

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

<I don’t think I’m supposed to have weapons.>

That wasn't what she had asked. But, she wasn't mad. At least, not at him. Whoever or whoevers deserved her ire had yet to be seen, but would be soon. "Who told you that?" she asked, trying her very best not to scoff.

In the space of speaking, she had hug her trident at her belt, slid a few medinjectors as well as detonators into empty utility pouches. She went to stand then, after taking a moment palming her chrome dartgun and choosing not to holster it at her thigh.

Kai Bamarri

 

[Kai Bamarri]

<Jedi told me that. I think.>

Kai was slightly distracted by a packet of chewing gum he had discovered hidden away in a kitchen drawer. He sniffed it and at first balked at the minty smell, but then couldn’t resist putting a piece in his mouth. Caf and chewing gum; two new things tried in one day, and it was barely past noon.

He turned around as she came in, the furrowed expression on his face giving away that he was trying to get used to the gum in his puckered mouth. The dartgun in her hand caught his eye, although more because he’d had a similar weapon used on him before. He stopped chewing.

<Is that for me?>

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

Ah. There it was.

Jedi. Figures.

She came to a stop near Kai, close but hopefully not threatening. "A dartgun's not too heavy. Easy for beginners," she began. Hopefully, that'd answer it; it was for him. "Well, relatively. You'll get the hang of it quick." She waved one hand dismissively before returning it to under the weapon. She believed in Kai quite a bit already; call it sithspawn kinship. "The darts are loaded with a watered down poison from my homeworld" -- Kamino, but she didn't say that much. "Similar to..." Her hand came up again to make a general gesture with an open palm. "...your hand thing. Still, please don't touch 'em. I have antidote on me, but don't really wanna go back home to get more any time soon, y'hear?"

She didn't say it mad -- she still wasn't, not really: suddenly nervous, more like it. It had been ages since she had taught anyone to hold, to aim, to shoot. There was no way in all the worlds she had forgotten how, but doubt still broke across her body. Strange as a siren not wanting any longer to swim was a military veteran who had literally done a stint as an instructor doubting her instincts.

"I, uh-- Can you absorb my memories, or should I give ya a quick how-to?"

Kai Bamarri

 

[Kai Bamarri]

Kai smiled with the ease of a baby.

<Don’t worry. Nothing is too heavy for me so far.>

To demonstrate, he hefted the dartgun as though it were a toy replica. It was indeed no trouble for him to lift it. The poison interested him.

<I can make my own poisons and antidotes, too.>

But he wasn’t about to deliberately poison himself just to show off. He shook his head.

<You would forget them if I absorbed your memories.>

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

Absorb.

Ah.

Both of her previous masters, Gerwald and Adron, would have never let her hear the end of that gaffe. But she wasn't familiar with the mindy side of Force powers, excepting telepathy. Not even mind trick. Why would a siren need it when when she could just sing instead? It didn't make victims suggestable, but it did thoroughly distract.

"Sure, right. Uh, read's maybe a better word?" she asked to clarify. In any case, "You'll be able to refill the darts, then. It'll give your poison a nice range...'less you can do that yourself too."

Kai Bamarri

 

[Kai Bamarri]

<Okay. Think about it.>

He gave her a second or two to recall the information, then dipped cautiously into her mind.

Though he only perused the surface of her thoughts, he felt drenched in the contents of her mind. Her memories were tantalizingly available. Kai fought against the temptation to feed, but it was like he was in a desert fighting the urge to drink clean, clear water.

He finally wrenched himself free with considerable difficulty. Taking a few steps backwards, he pressed the back of his hand against his mouth, a strange look in his borrowed blue eyes.

<I got it. We can go now.>

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

Somewhere within those memories was the most vivid among them, a fragmented scene from a riot on Vondarc:

<Copy clear.> Damsy scanned the square, her view a chaotic mess of movement, clothes, and exposed skin.​

Again, she pushed on, actively seeking whatever danger this gathering hid. Finally, she spotted a few marks. The scent was different, muted by oxidation out of water, but familiar still: of bloodlust and violence. <I have three and a possible fourth within strike range. Mark your targets on my HUD - I'll send you the frequency.> Ducking her head momentarily to focus on her wrist datapad, she did. <In the meantime, I'll see if I can't ID any blast weapons, but I don't wanna stare too long. I stick out like a sore thumb down here.> On the move again, she wove through the crowd. In a minute, she had taken a dozen staging grounds before falling back to the line, where she could call back Jade with the intel gathered: <Got my eyes on a handful of modified DH-17s. Can't get confirmation on detonators, but 'got an idea: fish for common explosive frequencies. Jam 'em if you find 'em.>

"Officer?" she asked the closest military uniform. She approached with her sunbonnet down, fiddling with her Kamioan dartgun in her hands. The side of the grip popped off, and she carefully picked out half of her clip. They found a new home in the man's gloved hand. "There's a CIS operative in overwatch. I need you to run these to them. Be. Discreet." The direction, in the form of a head nod, was rather vague, but Damsy didn't even know exact where the bird had nested. Only when she had left his, ducking back over the line into the brewing protest, did she explain, <Watered down Kaminoan poison darts on their way to you. They'll incapacitate, but allow for later interrogation. You got the three on your left. Keep an eye on 'em. Standby, I'll try to get them to the outskirts...>

Damsy held her right temple and shook her head against a sensation she had never before experienced. "Okay. 'Think I 'member the way."

**

Halfway back up to the Senatorial and Temple Districts, along a particular detour, the population thinned even though the roads widened. There was room aplenty to gather -- make their illicit or more innocuous dealings in plain, artificial light -- but shockingly few did. Whatever level they were on (Damsy had lost track; she had found their way by landmarks rather than numbers) looked like any other part of the underworld; cramped, dirty, and all metals. Once in every blue stride, the duo passed by a citizen or, even more rarely, two, just for them to rather quickly make themselves scarce.

"Real friendly folk," Damsy joked dryly upon one such occasion.

It was eerily strange to walk through a portion of the underworld that appeared so sparsely inhabited already, but the situation got worse in both regards as they pushed onwards towards Damsy's promised land. Or so she said, if they were in fact going the right way. But, for every block or so of duracrete they put behind them, it wasn't just habitation that dropped off -- the air's quality declined too. It remained perfectly translucent, free of visible particulates, but the smell:

Rust. Distilled engine oil. Water not contaminated with human but factory waste. An unimaginably potent atomic alphabet soup.

"Force, a'ight. I get it now," Damsy squeezed in between coughs. "I'd wanna be inside too. Chit." She situated a fold of her oversized scarf up over her mouth and nose. Taking by her reaction, the situation hadn't been this bad the last time she was here, and she had only been offworld a few years.

Kai Bamarri