Denon: Stealing Stolen Stuff [Luck's Revenge crew]

[Mir Nehrahn]

Assorted meats, vegetables, and starches sizzled on the hot grill. The colorful assortment danced around with the popping of the cooking oil and the playful tapping, shifting, flipping, and sorting of the chef's utensils. The blue Ortolan doing the artful culinary display had donned a pristine white chef's jacket, lined in black trim with a double row of buttons up the front, while his waist and below was obscured by the grill that he was expertly handling. The smell was indescribable, as the taste inevitably would be. Delicious was really the only descriptor that came to mind.

On the other side of the searing hot flattop sat the customers. Under the customers were various appropriate stools or chairs that brought their elbows to comfortably rest on the thin strip of table that separated them from the cooking surface. There was just enough room for the placement of dishware, glassware, and silverware without interfering with any seating position those dining might find themselves. This particular grill was curved so that a group of four to six could all easily make eye contact as they partook in the service. Of course, it also meant that to glance downward would bring their eyes to the foodstuffs being prepared, whetting their appetite in anticipation; a somewhat obvious if effective strategy taken by whomever designed the restaurant. Several of these similar grill-tables were set-up in relatively private booths through the establishment, allowing for customers to enjoy a show, a meal, and their own unfettered conversation free of nosy ears.

And there they sat: Mir Nehrahn and Kur Brile, an Ithorian and a Duros, handling a negotiation with some would-be not-friends over some stolen data that was about to be unstolen by some other folks in some other place. Who signed me up for this again? Mir thought, his eyes following the steady hands of Tel, their chef-not-chef, but actually-chef for the evening. Mir had been lost the first time the plan was established. He wasn't any less lost now that he was sitting in the midst of the plan in action.

Mir was a biologist. He was more likely to use his neural passageways discerning the way in which the sucrose, dextrose, and other sugars of their meal that evening were transformed through the addition of extreme temperature changes and aromatic seasoning than he was to attempt to serve as a buyer of some useless political mumbo-jumbo or military rigmarole or whatever supposedly essential information was kept on some storage device.

But there he was anyway; sitting in a restaurant on Denon, watching his rotund blue friend blissfully prepare a meal ignorant of any plan taking place, seated next to another blue friend cynically acting as a buyer, and attempting to act marginally interested in the goings on for the sake of a couple of would-be criminals in the making. Mir was glad they were human. He hadn't met a human who could read the expression of an Ithorian yet. Mir's plainly stated: lost in thought. If anything, they probably regarded his disposition as: deep in thought. Silly humans.

[member='Daiya'] [member="Sor-Jan Xantha"]​

 

[Sor-Jan Xantha]

A joint effort with the lovely [member="Daiya"]​

Breaths came in short spurts to the girl as they made their way down the wood-paneled hallway. Her muscles were sore from keeping them taut for so long, particularly the back of her calves. Placing down a foot against the bright, crimson carpeting, the Human teenager found herself swaying for a split second until her balance came back. She sighed inwardly, glancing over to her shorter companion in the red and gold-trimmed uniform of the hotel's bellhops. She nearly giggled at the sight but willed herself to stay quiet, lest their disguise be revealed.

The tow-headed boy moved with a purpose down the hallway, appearing to be nothing so much as a servant escorting a wealthy patron to her room. Sensing the girl’s distress and physical discomfort at the choice of footwear which had accompanied the dress, the young Jedi couldn’t help but flash a Sith-eating grin as he uttered, “Don’t trip.”

Daiya gave the boy at her side a sidelong glare, wondering how quickly he would adapt to wearing shoes without a flat sole. She shook off the thought carefully, trying not to jostle the carefully pinned hair atop her head, though part of her wanted to do so anyway simply to free the colored highlights she was so proud of. They had been carefully hidden among her blonde locks, much to the teen's dismay, for the purposes of their concealment.

This was all a ploy, a trick. The pair had done their best to blend in, but Daiya wondered for what real purpose. They had yet to pass any other hotel guests on this floor, and the ruse would be worthless once they reached their destination. If she squinted, the girl could just make out the door towards which they were headed. It just a door like any other, no more ornate or unique than the dozens of other doors on this floor, but a special door to Daiya and her companion. They had memorized the door, mapped its location against all the others, and made sure they could find their way even in the dark.

Well, maybe not in the dark, but it certainly felt possible.

Just another fifty meters to go. The mental countdown in her head was just one of the many thoughts occupying the girl's mind. Chief among them was the constant thought of how empty the hallway seemed. It was odd, for as much work as they put into the costumes and looking natural, it seemed all for naught. Leaning down to the tow-headed bow next to her, the girl hissed into his ear, "This would have worked a lot better without the getup."

“Your eyes can deceive you, don’t trust them,” the small Anzat uttered, looking up as he inclined his head first to their left, and then forward. Concealed in the crown moulding of the passage were holocams. Hotel security monitoring? Even if so, there was no way of being certain who might be viewing the feed. The lack of physical presence in the hallway did not equate to their not being watched.

As the pair passed by the door to room three-forty-seven, the boy paused for a moment. Closing his eyes, he held a hand up toward the entry. Then he seemed to relax, allowing his arm to fall back by his side as he looked up at the girl to say, “Quickly, while the way is clear.”

She tossed her head slightly in a nod, crouching down as she opened the small clutch gripped in her hand. From it, she extracted one of the items, a datapad far smaller than her own holojournal but enough for their needs today. Holding the clutch and the pad in one hand, she brushed another against the underside of the door's entry panel, feeling for the small hole she knew would be there. Extending the wire protruding from the ad-hoc device, the girl connected it into the panel's port, and turned her attention to the screen.

On screen was a jumble of numbers that would have ordinarily given her something of a headache, but Daiya knew this part like the back of her hand. There were more sophisticated lockbreaking tools out there, but this one had seen her through some rather dark days on her home world. The value may have been sentimental, but she didn't care. It was the one thing of hers that felt comfortable today. Her fingers danced over the datapad's controls for a moment, and then a small blip lit up on the screen, signalling her success. She smiled.

Unhooking the datapad, she stood carefully, heeding the earlier advice of the small boy by her side. Daiya glanced at him, nodding almost imperceptibly before saying, "We're in. Care to do the honors?"

Reaching underneath the hem of the short coat, the tow-headed boy brought a hand back to the small of his back. A scout blaster was soft holstered there, becoming visible as the small Corellian brought his arm around so that the compact weapon was held close to the chest. Turning his eyes up to look at the taller girl, the boy wryly asked, “What ever happened to ladies first?”

Keying the door activation panel, the young Anzat dropped inside the doorway in the same moment in which the door had retracted across the threshold. Dropping his center of gravity slightly, the boy was in a two-quarters stance with the blaster leveled as he got the first glimpse inside of the room.
Nothing was moving.

...including the Duros sitting in the chair.

The upholstery of the seat backing behind him was visible through the hole burned into his chest. The gray skin had taken on an ashen appearance, as the blood drained away from the capillaries.

“This…” the boy remarked simply, “...might be a problem.”

"And the Understatement of the Year Award goes toooo," the girl announced in a low voice, even as she made her way towards the grey-skinned corpse. Undisturbed by the presence of the body, or the scene of its death, she strode with confidence towards the chair, surveying the surroundings as she went. By the smell of it, or by the fact that Daiya was able to stand within a meter of the body without retching up her innards, the Duros had only been dead for a few hours. As she visually inspected the alien's wound, the girl uttered a low whistle.

"Looks like a high-caliber round, like from a carbine or a blaster rifle. Whoever did this meant serious business." Stepping away from the body, Daiya looked about the rest of the room, taking in the tipped end table, upended chairs, open cabinets and drawers in various states of disarray. A leaning peek into the hallway leading to the bedrooms told the same story, and elicited a sigh from the teen's slender frame. To no one in particular, she remarked, "These were pros."

Lowering his pistol, the young bellhop put the weapon away as he moved to explore the interior of the room. At the comment, the boy circled back from the refresher off the bedroom to look at the body more closely.

Single, large-bore wound to the chest. “Professional, yes,” the child-Jedi murmured in agreement, before he reached two fingers to gently explore the edges of the wound. “But this wasn’t a blaster round,” he noted, taking his eyes away to look back up at the girl as he spoke.

“There aren't any scorch marks on the clothing,” he explained, before turning back toward the interior of the room. “I’m going to guess it isn’t here…” the boy began, changing topics slightly.

It was the object they had been tasked to uncover in this particular hotel room, or at the very least, its location. The room was checked out under a name which meant nothing in particular, but traced back to a Human with ties to the underground movements on Denon and beyond. A Human that happened to be meeting with an unlikely pair in a restaurant not far from here, under the assumption that the Ithorian and Duros meeting him were interested in buying the stolen Republic data crystal he had for sale.

They were not, and it was quickly becoming clear that someone else knew that, too.

Turning his head, the boy glanced back to the girl and asked, “Can you get ahold of Mir or Kur? Is the buyer still at the table?”

Withdrawing the second item from her clutch, the girl held a small comlink in her hand. Turning it on, she pressed the button to open the channel, connecting to the microphone fastened around the tubby form of their Ortolan friend posing as the restaurant's chef. The small speaker issued forth a tinny assortment of sounds, mostly a digital scuffling and scratching as the big blue chef moved around, accompanied by the occasional bang and sizzle of the pots and pans evidently before him. With her comlink's own mic muted, Daiya spoke harshly to the device, as if the furball could hear, "Come on, Tel, be quiet for once."

Putting the comlink between the two of them, Daiya leaned in close and beckoned for the boy to follow suit.

Reaching out, the boy toggled the control to unmute the microphone on the link before he spoke. "Tawrro? Tawrro, can you see Kur or Mir?" the young Jedi inquired, hoping that something was getting through. "Are they still at the table?"

 

[Mir Nehrahn]

Credits. Who cares?

Mir didn't. He supposed that's why he was more interested in the food being served than the conversation. Typically, they ate this sort of fare for market price. Tel was their ship's chef after all. He was only posing as an employee. They had signed up the Ortolan for duty in the just-slightly-less-than lavish restaurant with some help from some person of whom Mir hadn't bothered to remember the name. The restaurant was chosen specifically for Tel, as it put him in close proximity to the four of them, not so that he could be useful, but so that the mic pinned to him would be useful. And so that Kur or Mir, if searched, would be found wearing nothing but the clothes on their backs. The purpose of the mic was so other members involved would have a head's up on everything being discussed at the table. Or just to make sure Mir and Kur weren't being shot. Or was that the Wookiee's job? That was just another thing that Mir had chosen to not care about.

Credits, though. These were a thing that Mir didn't understand, and, as a result, the nagging lack of comprehension meant that the Ithorian would inevitably spitball into an internal deliberation over the subject while Kur played nice with their company. Or stooges. But were they stooges that were company or company that were stooges? Best leave the complicated matters to Kur, Mir cynically reasoned.

The Ithorian could understand possession. After all, life was a possession. Having freedom meant the ownership of one's own existence. Slavery was not the only way one's existence could be indebted to another, though debt and obligation in general meant a kind of slavery to something, if not someone. In a way, a garden was a slave to the gardener, pruned, plucked, and planted as the caretaker saw fit. Just as an employee was a slave to their superiors. The only difference between sentient trafficking and an employee-employer relationship was the freedom for the employee to leave the service of the employer, thus maintaining a small fraction of freedom.

Credits, though. They were a representation for the potential for ownership. And yet every numeric value assigned to a possessable item was entirely arbitrary. There was no standard for the representation due to the misconceived notion that because a thing could be possessable, that thing must therefore have a set value. That worth, though, differed from person to person. Food sold to a world stricken by drought was valued by the consumer at a far greater price than one with a bountiful harvest. To Mir, it wasn't the value of them item that fluctuated. The item was absolute, its value was that it was the item itself, for the role the item served remained unchanged when traded. Food would always be food. Medicine, medicine, and so on. Since the item would always be the item, the credit was therefore the shifting quantity, thus always being nothing more than potential.

In the end, Mir supposed that his lack of understanding came from a lack of desire. His values were unquantifiable, and thus unobtainable through credits. The system was a thing he could understand. Those that actively engaged with the system were those beyond Mir's comprehension.

As Kur continued to haggle, one of the humans, the mousy slicer, seemed to grow restless. The slicer's partner, an overconfident and charismatic but less-than-informed female, who coincidentally probably could have made a fantastic politician, noticed her comrade's uneasiness. The woman began trying to rush the negotiation into completion or adjourn the meeting until another time. The change happened slowly and became more and more obvious the more restless the slicer became. Kur noticed it immediately while Mir was off in his own world. Realizing that the pair might have gotten tipped off, he leaned in and, with a straight face, began the only stalling tactic that crossed his mind in that moment.

"Ever seen a shaved Ewok?"

[member="Daiya"] [member="Sor-Jan Xantha]​

 

[Mir Nehrahn]

From a darkened corner of the room, a large mass of shaggy, brown hair moved. In a matter of seconds, it had crossed the distance between its post and the table occupied by a pair of Humans, an Ithorian and a Duros. A second later, the table contained only the latter two members, and the tawny mass was holding up the two Humans by a pair of thick, tree-trunk sized arms.

A loud, long warble filled the air of the restaurant, overpowering the efforts of the Wookiee's translation device. Few beings needed such a translation to understand the peril they faced in that sort of moment. An angry Wookiee was not one to be trifled with, and at the moment, the Wookiee named Tawrrowaldr was very angry.

Tawrrowaldr turned to the Duros, and between their eyes a glance passed, and an almost imperceptible inclination of the head, the Wookiee turning over command to the blue-skinned gunslinger.

Kur simply watched, still leaned forward on his elbows, as the beastly Wookiee lifted their former dinner guests from their seats and held them well above their seats and the floor. The once-fidgety slicer was overcome with terror and froze like a plank in the grasp of Tawrrowaldr. His companion, on the other hand, squirmed and fought against her captor, though quite unsuccessfully due to a sever disparity in strength.

Finally the Duros slung his head down, letting out something between a groan and a sigh. The Wookiee had responded to codeword: Ewok exactly as planned, though his less-than-flowery disposition told Kur that something quite a bit more foul than these two mindless ranats was afoot. Head still dangling between his shoulders, the Duros pivoted his neck to the right, looking at Mir who was, much to Kur's surprise, was paying attention for once. Kur supposed it was difficult not to notice a lumbering giant like Tawrro exercise his brawn.

Tel, on the other hand, kept on cooking.The Ortolan was probably the only person in the entire establishment not concerned with the angry Wookiee.


Kur stood from his seat. "What a waste. Didn't even get to try the noodles." The pilot reached over to the oblivious chef. Grabbing the commlink and clicking it a few times, gestured to Tawrro and Mir and make for the door. The Duros grabbed at Tel again, this time pulling at the coat's collar of the Ortolan's chef jacket and dragging the bumbling cook behind him. Tel protested but still managed to snag a few bits of food from the grill as he backwards-waddle-flailed under Kur's grip. As he passed the receptionists table on the way out, he flipped the petite Omwati a Republic credit. "Sorry about the mess."

Stepping outside and into the bright night of Denon's supercity, Kur brought the commlink to his face. "What the feth happened, you two?"

Spoiler

A joint production with the esteemed [member="Daiya"]

[member="Daiya"] | [member="Sor-Jan Xantha"]​

 

[Daiya]

Holding the comlink between them, Daiya winced as she heard the scuffle over the speaker. Without a video link, there was little idea of what was going on until she heard Tawrro's loud yell, and she nearly dropped the device in surprise. A knowing smile spread across the young teen's face as she glanced to her tow-headed companion, watching his reaction to the cacophony. When the Wookiee's cry had died out, the girl made a satisfied sound from the back of her throat. Even without the translator's assistance, she knew the Wookiee enough to decipher his tone. "Well, Sor-Jan," she declared, the grin sitting smugly on her face, "I dare say they're not at the table anymore, but I don't think they got far."

"Let's hope they left after the winnings were distributed, and not with the chips on the table," the small Corellian remarked. You had to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em... and know when to take the credits and run.

The comlink crackled again, and this time the crackling voice of Kur sounded over the small device. Even as the comlink made his voice sound small and far away, his words had no such implications as they issued harshly forth from the small speaker. "What the feth happened, you two?"

Daiya's grin disappeared, her cheer falling as their companion's words sunk in. The Duros, the dead one sitting in the chair not a meter away, floated back to the top of her mind, as if she needed a reminder of why they were there. Shifting on her pointed heels, the girl fumbled for surer footing before attempting a reply. "Someone beat us here, Kur, and they didn't leave any living witnesses."

"There must have been another buyer," the young Jedi mused aloud.

Daiya shot the young Anzati boy a look, some mix between annoyance and amusement. Her grin melted into a close pursing of her lips as she opened them to remark, "I think they got the two-hand discount."

Kur dropped the transceiver away from his face and glanced over at the Human, would-be criminals. He again sigh-groaned and shook his head. Tawrro and Mir made for the somewhat spacious speeder that they had been sponsored to rent while performing their job on Denon. The three of them were all too tall for the smaller models, probably much to the chagrin of whomever was footing the bill. Fortunately, it meant that even with the additional two passengers, they weren't cramped for space.

"Not buyer," Kur said as they piled into the airspeeder. "Thief. Like us. " He settled into the pilot's seat and readied the repulsorlifts.

Nodding, the boy said nothing. Looking around the interior of the hotel room, whoever had come here seemed to have done whatever it was they came to do. And probably left with whatever they came looking for. "Come on," the boy remarked, ushering the girl back into the hallway. "I doubt there's anything we'll find here."

Nodding, the girl followed, pausing for a moment to remove the high-heeled shoes from her feet. Sighing with content, wiggled her toes into the carpeting, relishing the feeling of the fabric against her bare feet. Picking up the shoes by their straps, Daiya followed Sor-Jan back down the corridor they had come earlier, wondering aloud, "They couldn't have gotten far." Holding the comlink to her mouth, she asked directly, "Anything useful on your end?"

Within the confines of the speeder, Tawrrowaldr settled into the back, shoving the two Humans into seats built for someone twice their size. They didn't need to be told to stay. Unceremoniously, the Wookiee began patting down one of the Humans, the talkative one, prompting a loud protest of, "Hey! What are you doing?" The Wookiee ignored her cries, dumping the contents of her pockets and any other items he found on her person to his Ithorian companion. Tawrro quickly moved to the other Human, who smartly remarked, "Ordinarily, I'd want dinner first before we get this personal." When he was done, the Wookiee sat back in his seat, grabbing the large carbine from the rack it had been secured to, and faced the Humans with wary eyes as the speeder zoomed along.

Mir sorted through the various items dropped into his lap mostly out of boredom. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, if he was looking for anything at all. Most of it seemed like synthetic garbage to him: some kind of breath freshener that smelled strongly of disinfectant, various identification and credit chits, as well as some flimsi with undecipherable scribbles on them. Mir was a little disappointed by the lack of lint. He browsed over a small black cube without paying it much mind, setting it back in his lap. The cube then started blinking. Mir blinked in response a few times before he picked up the now black cube emitting the occasional green flash. He ran his gangly fingers over it until a holographic display materialized. Several more flashing symbols and dots appeared.

Briefly, Kur glanced at the cube in Mir's hands. He thumbed the comm again. "Found something. Looks like a transmitter. Taking it back to the ship."

"Then I think we're done here," the young boy's voice answered through the link.

The Duros shut the output of the comm again and turned his head so that he could address their less-than-welcome passengers while still keeping his eyes focused on traffic. "Anything you want to tell us about this cube?" The mousy slicer looked nervously to his companion who had no problem returning to her flirtatiously outward negotiating approach. "I don't know. Are you going to pay us for that information?" If Kur had had irises, his eyes would have visibly rolled. Instead he offered something between a groan and a grumble as the speeder shot off in the direction of the landing pad where Luck's Revenge was parked.

Touching the girl on the elbow, the small Jedi guided her out of the room and back into the hallway. They had planned to leave together, as a group, but that plan had clearly been met with unforeseen obstacles. Time for Plan B.

What was Plan B, you ask? An airspeeder waiting for them above the roof.

---

A joint effort with [member="Sor-Jan Xantha"] and [member="Mir Nehrahn"].

 

[Mir Nehrahn]

Furry feet happily padded across the durasteel floors of the Consular-class cruiser. The soft but damp footfalls came quickly, and the scurrying would not have been difficult to locate had anyone else been on the ship. But no one else was on the ship. That was, save for a couple of astromech droids and a medical droid. But no people. And no people meant for an exuberant Tynnan.

With everyone out on their mission, Stannon had volunteered to remain behind and watch the Luck's Revenge. For one, he would have been no use in any capacity to either a negotiation or a break-and-enter operation. On top of that, the furry little rodent was an absolute disaster in public. Keeping cool with so many people around watching was not something Stannon could accomplish; his jitters alone would have been enough to compromise either party.

So on the ship he stayed, alone, left to his tinkering. He was slowly growing used to the additional company. But the crawlspaces of the vessel served as an appropriate refuge when their stares, glares, glances, and words got to be too oppressive. As did the engineering compartments, ones the Tynnan now found himself running to and from. There weren't any projects in particular that needed doing, however Stannon couldn't help but take a device apart, figure it out, and put it back together, often better than he found it. Kur had taken to calling him "whiz" recently when the Duros was bothered to use a noun. That always made Stannon's nose scrunch and his whiskers twitch out of bashfulness.

As lost in fun as Stannon was, he nearly missed the mellow gonging notification of an incoming commlink transmission. Unsuspecting as Stannon was, it was fortunate someone had remembered to link the comms together in all of the rooms so that wherever someone was, the ship would receive the call anywhere. So it was that when a nasal shout came over the speaker system, that Stannon nearly jumped out of his fur, spilling parts and parts that held other parts together all over the floor. The Tynnan realized a few moments later that the shout had come from the commlink, not from someone that had managed to break into the ship on Stannon's watch, but he was still hesitant to respond, even as the incoming message sounded more and more like Kur.

The sound of happy padding was replaced by the sound of nervous scampering. Stannon haphazardly put his toys, gadgets, metal things, away and moved to the bridge where he could ready the ship up for the arrival of the others. And they were bringing guests! Stannon forgot why he needed to go to the bridge, or rather remembered that he didn't need to go there and found himself running all about without actually accomplishing anything. After a seemingly endless period of time which was actually quite brief, Kur, Mir, and the Wookiee parked their speeder next to the Luck's Revenge on the skyward landing pad. The loading ramp was remotely activated and Stannon peered around a corner with one eye, holding on to the edge with a single furry paw, as he watched five people board the previously comfortable, empty vessel.

Kur noticed him immediately. "Need a decryption," the Duros said as he rounded the corner ahead of the others. Stannon flitted his glances skittishly between Kur and everyone else before the pilot offered his hand, reaching far down to the much shorter Tynnan. Stannon's eyes fixated on the object in Kur's large, pale blue palm. Stannon locked his gaze with Kur's for a moment, but the expression of the Duros did not change. In a flash, Stannon grabbed the black cube and ran off down the hallway towards one of his secluded engineering hubs. He thought he heard one of the Humans say something about his cuteness, but that only made Stannon run faster.

 

[Sor-Jan Xantha]

The airspeeder raced between the casino resort and the starport where the ship awaited them.

The small Jedi was behind the controls, the teenaged gunslinger beside him and a young clone in a chauffeurs outfit sitting with military rigidity in the backseat. As they journeyed, the diminutive Anzat had lapsed into brooding. "They couldn't have planned this to the minute, and they wouldn't be sticking around here," the tow-headed boy mused aloud, more for the sake of hearing himself think than for the input which his companions might have added.

Holding up the commlink, the boy spoke and said, "Ar-Three..." R3-M9. One of the astromechs aboard the Consular ship. "...check for any unregistered departures."

It was a shot in the dark, but it seemed their last, best hope for catching up to whatever or whomever had stolen the data crystal from under their nose.

Still, a shot in the dark. And it felt dark. The Dark Side. "There's something that we're not seeing," the Corellian Jedi remarked candidly, as rivets of gooseflesh trailed up his arms. He felt cold. A presence? He couldn't tell. The Dark Side shrouded everything about the Force. "Everything about this mission is clouded," the boy uttered finally.

Seated beside the tow-headed boy, Daiya was doing her best against the throbbing distraction from the back of her head. It had started small, but the ache grew as they continued, and the girl tried to mask it with an air of calm. Pretty soon her deep, staggered breaths gave way to sharp, ragged gasps, the very act of staying alive, of staying sane, boiled down to a single measure of air intake. Regaining a little control over herself, she managed to remark to her chatty companion, "You know the sky is clear, right? I don't think it rains much on―"

With a gasp accompanying a sudden sharp pain at the front of her skull, the blue-eyed girl shut herself off from the world around her, pressing a hand to her forehead and applying pressure with her thumb and forefinger. As if that would stem the tide, the assault of imagery that battled her mental resources and overwhelmed her senses. It was a losing battle, yet she fought. Mostly on instinct, but also because she was scared. Scared that she was losing her mind. Scared that someone would discover her secret. But mostly of all, she was scared because the visions always seemed to come true.

Red and green. It was hazy, as if obscured by smoke. From time to time, a tendril of fire curled around the grey haze, reasserting itself against the speeder's frame. A door was a ajar, and not far from it lay a figure. Unmoving, at first, and then with a cough that seemed to hint at some deeper injury, life. The figure reached a gloved hand into a pocket and pulled out a small object, a crystal of some sort. A smile flashed on the figure's face, a last glimpse before the crowd and the smoke swallowed the figure and the speeder both.

As the world coalesced back into being around her, the blonde-haired girl shook her head, removing her hand from her forehead in the process. It was a symbolic maneuver, but it helped clear her thoughts, to give her the focus she needed to process what she had seen. As the sights pressed in around her, looming menacingly as the after effects of the vision dissipated, the girl wrapped her arms around her body. She wanted to find Tawrro, to feel his warm embrace, his reassuring words. But she was far from the ship, and far ahead in traffic was a bright red and green speeder. Bracing herself, she turned to Sor-Jan and reached out her hands, "Give me the controls."

The small Anzat turned to deliver a scathing glare at the suggestion he hand over the controls to the teenaged girl.

"We tried that on Coruscant, remember?" the boy noted pointedly. He, for one, did not feel up to being violently ejected out of an airspeeder today. Or tomorrow for that matter. At the same time, her demeanor had just shifted completely. "Why? What are you after?" the boy inquired curiously, as he turned his attention back to the air ahead.

The girl sighed with a little less resignation than she had expected. The boy's words cut a little, but he was right. She couldn't drive for crap. Nodding, she turned to the traffic ahead, hesitating for a moment to pick out the speeder again. It quickly entered a tunnel system, vanishing from view. Her voice lifting high in the heat of the moment, Daiya motioned to the tunnel and said, "In there! They went in the tunnel." Before Sor-Jan could ask again, the girl waved him off, "We don't have time for the cautious approach, just do it."

Reaching across, the boy slid the speeder into a lower gear as he punched the accelerator. Angling the nose down, the boy guided the open craft out from beneath the sky traffic and across the intersecting lanes through which various speeders passed. Ducking and dodging the different vehicles suddenly crossing their path, the small Jedi skillfully weaved their way into the tunnel system. With his attention on avoiding the other traffic, he hadn't been able to pay much attention to any particular target ahead. As a consequence of which, he had no idea just which vehicle it was that the girl was so fixated upon.

Whatever she was seeing, he hoped she was right about this.

"Can you still see it? Is it up ahead?" the boy asked, as he continued to fight with the controls as the speeder accelerated faster and faster into the tunnel.

"I see them," Daiya replied without turning her head. Her eyes were set on the speeder as it weaved in and out of traffic. It didn't seem to be aware of their pursuit, its behavior just a means to avoid slower traffic inside the tunnel, often resulting in close scrapes or near misses as the vehicle darted between the oncoming traffic and the unforgiving confines of the shaft.

For a moment, she closed her eyes again, recalling the vivid graphics of her vision. She scoured the memory, wishing she had the time to draw it out on her holojournal. That would have to come later. Her search proved fruitless, nothing in the imagery gave her any clue of where the craft was headed.

"Do you have a clear shot?"

She opened her eyes, catching the tail end of Sor-Jan's question. The girl shot a pointed glance toward her companion, still dressed as a comically small bellhop. She supressed yet another giggle at the sight, screwing up her face into as serious an expression as she could manage for the moment. "You want me to shoot them? Are we on to Plan C already?"

"Plan C was yesterday, this is more like Plan F," the boy quipped back in reply. "As much as I enjoy a good speeder chase, I assume we don't want them to get where they're going."

A nod from the girl was her only response. Retrieving the small clutch purse from its secure position in the speeder's side door, Daiya put the cloth object in her lap as she opened it. From within, she took out the last of the items stored inside, a sleek, silvery device. It had an obvious handle attached to a bulbous barrel, from which a long, narrow cylinder extended, flaring slightly at the end to complete the form. Small enough to conceal inside her clutch, the holdout blaster was loaded for only two shots.

After all, it didn't hurt to have an extra.

Bracing herself against the air whizzing over their heads, the girl started to rise into the open space above the roofless speeder cabin. She caught herself on the windshield as the air buffetted her small frame, giving a small bit of thanks to the bun keeping her hair from flapping about in the wind. Daiya sank again, turning around to the younger boy in the backseat. Dressed as comically as his older companion, the similarities between the two ended there, but for the way Sor-Jan treated his shadow, whose somewhat strange nickname was Three, they could have been brothers. She almost had to bellow to be heard in the backseat, throwing her voice against the whirl of air current that quickly turned to eddies above their speeder.

"Three, help me, will you?" Daiya beckoned the small boy to assist her, gesturing with her hands what she wanted him to do.

The young clone trooper said nothing in reply, scrambling over the seat back which divided the front section of the passenger compartment from the rear.

Daiya turned around again to face the front, leaning over the windshield carefully. When she felt the small boy's hands on her waist, the girl felt reassured, and a brief smile flitted over her face. She wiped it off, training her eyes on the speeder ahead, and raised the blaster.

Seconds ticked by, and she waited. Her arm grew still, her breath steady. Her eyes fixed on the space just above the engines of the red and green speeder, just high enough to miss the glowing flame of the exhaust grills, just low enough not to breach the cabin. The air seemed to hiss around her, a buzz, a hum of sorts, and that was one of two things she heard.

The other was her heartbeat. Thump. Thump. Hiss. Thump. Thump. Hiss.

When she finally pulled the trigger, the sound surprised the teen. She did her best not to jostle, afraid of slipping despite the grip of hands bracing her. The evidence of her actions could be seen from the speeder ahead, which now sported a trail of smoke protruding from the rear of the vehicle, engines slowly sputtering out in a cough of interrupted exhaust plumes, choking the life from the innocent machine. Daiya sat back down, grinning wildly at Sor-Jan and Three both.

"Well, if we didn't have their attention before... we'll certainly have it now," the young Corellian noted aloud, following closely as the speeder before them started to take a nose-dive in what appeared to be a maneuver designed to try and control the inevitable crash to come.

"Let's just hope you shot the right target."