Private Cracking Chains

[Anakin Stormrunner]

Denon buzzed with life. The distant sound of speeders and the low hum of voices reminiscent of the Kirik Fly that would hide in the shade of tatooine cliffs, building tunnels into the walls and attacking all who approached with its vicious stinger. As with all things on Denon, even the most alien of elements, when compared to his distant desert home, was burdened with a familiar ache. Even the streetlights, which flickered orange in the gloom of the lower level, brought to mind the flickering lights of dying electric lanterns and burning oil lamps of the slave quarters. The street was empty, save for a few unsavory characters, with none to pay any mind to the blue winged being but the ever watching cameras. That was fine. Anakin was always watched, and these depur were blind to the plans he had for them.

Buildings sagged as he walked, each one looking more exhausted than the last. Rust patterned the metal walls, and this far down you only just begin to see the pock marks of the faintly acidic rain. These people were just as starved of clean water as his once was. Though they were taunted with the few tainted and poisonous drops that could make their way down. Those at the bottom of the planet, nestled close to it's rotting putrid core, received no rain at all, and relied only on what they could glean from their faucets and taps and purchase from the levels above. Anakin would change that. His very name, a promise and a testament, proved it. He was the One that Brings the Rain, and help would come from the core before he didn't free those around him.

In a way, that was the purpose of his travel. It was the reason he descended these depths and approached the Blue Flame. Outwardly, the bar was much like the buildings around it. Old, with rust clinging to the corners and small pockmarks along the old path of the water. Despite this, much of the rust was scrubbed clean and the brightly painted walls and neon lights assured that it would stick out from its neighbors.

The low hum of voices and the thrum of music, just loud enough to obscure the conversations of the other patrons while allowing individuals to converse freely, filled the inside of the bar. Anakin make his way over to a table. Though he took no obvious heed of his surroundings, his ears and eyes strained to take stock of his surroundings and though he did not know it, the force stretched around him to accommodate the short comings of his physical senses. It wouldn't be long now until his contact arrived, and he'd best be on guard until then.

This job wasn't like the others. he wasn't meeting with a fellow slave, but instead a freed woman. One who was born and raised free. The information his associates could gleam, thin as it was, had placed the woman as Sentiri, A chiss who had some history working for the corpos. Anything beyond her recent years in the galaxy however, was a jumbled mess of half found articles and long dead links. An investigator or even an experienced hacker may have been able to dredge up the documents, but there were few of those in the Trail, and even fewer that he could have contacted.No, anything of Sentiri's time in the Ascendancy had long been lost in the depths of the holoweb. Her history with Rhéala Alevy however, was much more attainable. A single thread of the past saved in relation to the human's own personal history.

The door swung open once moor, and all thoughts on the past were pushed to way side in the face of her contact. "Thanks for agreein to meet with me. I'm Anakin. You may not have seen me there, but we were both at that fancy party at Sakedo tower." Even if she had seen him, nothing but the wings would have given away his identity, dressed as he was a black form fitting shirt, sleeveless and coming up to wrap around his neck and leave his back open. It wasn't the best shirt for hidden weapons, but he rarely hid his guns in placed like this. "The heart of the matter, is that I'd like to help you. I saw you there with Rhéala and Sun, and I've spent enough of my life in chains to know a slave when I see one. If you'll have me, I wanna help you free her."

Sentiri

 

[Sentiri]

The days following the party had been dreadful. Sentiri had gone home with Rhéala and her partner's charge, Zo'i. But Rhé wasn't really ... present. Her partner was so demoralized and defeated by all of what Luminous Sun had brought to light. The Chiss woman had tried to talk with Rhé, had tried to at least acknowledge that they had an unborn child together, but the more Sentiri tried to coax words out of her love, the more Rhé closed in on herself. And when Sentiri inevitably grew frustrated with her failure to get Rhé to talk, that ended up causing Rhé to walk out, leaving an upset Sentiri by herself with the dumbfounded Zeltron teenager.

Zo'i had seemed distant too. But Sentiri got the distinct impression from the way the girl had responded to everything that the teen didn't know any more than Sentiri did. The two had just started to maybe build a bond, but now, with their mutual connection of Rhéala out in the cold, a chasm had spread between the two. Rhéala continued to come and go, more deadpan than the most unfeeling of Chiss. Sometimes Zo'i would go with her. At most, all Sentiri would ever say to the too-young-to-be-so-responsible teen was: "Look out for her." Zo'i would nod silently and that would be it.

The Chiss had finally gotten her life back together. She had been envisioning a beautiful existence travelling the galaxy for a little bit and then maybe settling down somewhere. Now that seemed farther away than ever.

Despondent, Sentiri had spent a lot of time holed up in her old apartment. She had been smart not to have sold it after moving in with Rhé weeks back. There wasn't anything in the space save for her sprawling mass of monitors and cables and components that made up her terminal setup. No one but Dara knew that the place existed, though. Which made it a perfect spot for Sentiri to begin figuring out how to get her life back.

And then she had received a message. She had been in enough tough spots to have learned that no one could accomplish great feats alone. And the feat she was thinking of accomplishing might just be the greatest she would ever face. Any help was a start. So she responded, and they agreed to meet at a ... familiar location.

She strode through the door of the Blue Flame. Sentiri had only been to the tavern once before. It seemed no different now, though maybe a little more lively. That didn't concern her, though. She simply made for the designated table and sat across from a fellow with wings dressed in black. The Chiss too was in all black, though her fatigues looked far more utilitarian. She leaned forward, crossing her arms, placing her elbows on the table. She listened to the winged man talk. She winced when he spoke the names of the two people whose lives she wanted to save.

For several moments she said nothing. Her red, opaque eyes didn't waver as she stared down the being sitting across from her. But the intensity that often accompanied her glare wasn't there, replaced by an overwhelming weariness. "So I understand. How do we do that?"

Anakin Stormrunner​

 

[Anakin Stormrunner]

Slavery was a dangerous business. The masters had to fear an uprising, and they worked hard keep their slaves down. There was a saying, among the amavikka, that Anakin couldn't help but remember. A single grain of sand is not dangerous alone, but with other grains and a strong wind they can rip flesh from bone. Like all of his people's sayings, its meaning was hidden in metaphor and culture. Here in this bar of dissent and brewing revolution, Anakin was creating his own storm. Starting with Sentiri.

"From what I could find, Rhéala's chain is worn around Sun's neck. Her- and your unborn child." The words tasted of ash on his tongue, and the desert howled in his bones. On Tatooine, masters had often separated children from their parents at such an age that they would remember nothing of their family. Their family records would be wiped of their existence and the child's name would be changed. All in an attempt to better control them. Despite this, the very idea of using someone's own flesh and blood to keep them enslaved whipped his desert into a storm, scrapping against his bones in it's fervor to get out and consume the very thing that caused it. Anakin couldn't let it. He wouldn't let it. Storms didn't differentiate from friend and foe. They would destroy both in equal measure. Anakin would not risk destroying the child.

Pupiless blue eyes pinned Sentiri. “The obvious goal is to take it back, but the embryo and it's container have been in Sun's hands for years now. We have no idea what safety measures he may have added in case we tried something like this." They would be going in blind, and that was too much of a risk. “What we need is information. There are slaves that work close to depur, er- to Sun, but none of them have the technical knowledge to find anything out.” A smile split his face. A dry, determined thing that did not reach his eyes but instead bared his teeth in what could have been a challenge. “You however, are a well known investigator and slicer. If we can get you in, do you think you can find the information?"

Sentiri

 

[Sentiri]

The pain on her face didn't lessen as Anakin spoke. She'd been going over everything in her mind every since she had found out. She'd attempted to track down every bit of information that she could on her own without doing anything so drastic as breaking and entering. With her previous CorpSec security clearances having gone defunct, she had reduced her options. The cackle that Blackheart had surely uttered after learning of all this himself was a sound that haunted the Chiss woman.

An unborn child... She couldn't even begin to process those emotions. She'd never considered herself as a mother, even when she had been married. Rhé had gone behind her back and managed to take some of her genetic material to create an embryo. And then had lost that precious creation, yet to be realized. And to have that child be held captive, in whatever state? It was all just too much. How was she supposed to process this? How was her logical brain supposed to come to terms with these feelings she hardly understood? How was she supposed to handle all of this with Rhé completely shut off from her?

But this being, this boy or man, she couldn't tell, seemed to have a plan. How could she refuse? She could barely make sense of it all. She needed all the help she could get.

"I don't know. But I can do my best." The words felt so foreign to her. Sentiri was a confident woman. She never went into a situation unprepared. She knew the outcome before she took on a task because she always knew the answers before taking even a single action.

Sentiri was a different woman now. Unsure. Unprepared. Ill-equipped. She wanted to throw up.

Waters had somehow appeared at their table without a word. Whoever had walked by and dropped them off must have noticed how serious their conversation was and thought better than to disturb them. She envied their ability to move without being noticed. There was a time when that was a skill of hers as well. She wondered if she was still capable.

But she needed to be. She needed to be capable for Rhé. For her child. For Zo'i, too. She needed to find her strength.

Anakin Stormrunner​

 

[Anakin Stormrunner]

"That's all I ask." Anakin picked up his own glass, downing the water and ignoring the metallic taste. Some water was better than no water, and even on Denon he proudly remembered the warnings of the Grandmothers. Water was precious, they would say. So know why you are crying, and save your tears for when they truly matter. He could still remember the night he had learned it, under desert stars with still burning dunes beneath his feet, as his arm bled from the enforcers cruel tipped whip. How innocent he had been back then.

The glass landed back on the table with a soft thud. Now was not the time for recollection. "Give me twelve days, and I can set something up." Reaching into his bag, Anakin pulled out a pen and quickly scrawled a number on the napkin. "This is my number. If anything happens with Sun or Rhéala or anything else, give me a call and I'll be there as soon as I can. I'll contact you as soon as everything's ready." With that, the harpy stood from the table, dropping a couple chips onto the plastic surface as he went.

Sentiri