First Reply I Can Save You

[Voxum]

Denon was a wild world. It was impossible not to come across at least one gunfight in the lower levels. Overdoses were even more common. It was a sad state of affairs for the organics. Voxum walked among the streets, keeping away from the gunfights. They weren't their focus. No, instead they came to a stop beside another. Overdosed, as they'd expected. The report had come in, but there were no medics that would save this soul. Death was the only thing that awaited them as the drugs they'd taken overloaded their frail body.

Voxum hated that. The weakness of flesh. How fragile these people were, and how often they broke themselves down. They reached out a hand, gently touching the barely aware face. "Don't worry." Metallic fingers touched the addict's temples. "I can save you." Strain. Pain. Both suddenly crossed the man's face before his eyes suddenly went blank. Voxum's faceplate flashed with various colors, and at once the body fell limp. Dead. Voxum stood then, standing tall as they turned their gaze along the street.

"One day I'll save all of you."

 

[Tryk Zhot]

A cough, from a darkened alley.

An alley dark to most, but not to someone like Voxum.

And perhaps not dark to its curent occupant, either. He half-scrambled, half-stumbled along. Yellow eyes pierced the shadows. Eyes that darted back and forth, seeking danger. Or maybe seeking aid.

As those eyes wandered onto the form of Voxum, they locked on. Perhaps by now the Ion Pistol and Ion Rifle which this figure carried would become apparent. Perhaps his species might also become apparent.

A Jawa.

But clearly, a wounded Jawa. His reddish-brown cloak was stained with a darker shade of crimson. And even as Voxum watched, the stain could be seen to grow.

"You..." a deep, modulated voice emanated from the Jawa, seeming too low in tone to come from such a creature.

"What kind droid you?"



Voxum

 

[Voxum]

​

Voxum turned their faceplate towards another as they approached. There were no photoreceptors to see, but they could very much see the shorter figure. Jawa. Scavenger. Breaker. They knew quite a bit about the Jawa's and their ability to dismantle technology and droids with ease. A threat, if he wasn't so clearly injured. It was painful to look at. Such was the fate of all organics, though.

"The kind that can save you, if you only ask."

Tryk Zhot

 

[Tryk Zhot]

The yellow eyes under the Jawa's hood almost seemed to brighten.

"Medical Droid?" The modulated, deep voice managed to seem relieved even after the electronic processing of a vocoder mask.

The Jawa stumbled closer.

At this distance, it was clearer what had caused the damage to the diminutive creature. A heavy blaster bolt had struck something under its robes. A kind of patched-together improvised armor had stopped the blaster's energy. But a piece of the makeshift armored undersuit had broken apart and been pushed into the flesh of the furry entity.

Spalling, some people called it. Even if the armor stopped a killing blow, debris from the impact could still hurt its wearer.

"Yes! You fix Tryk! Tryk bleeding." The Jawa gestured to its own body, where the claret was expanding its mark onto his clothes.

Yellow eyes darted over the apparent droid once more.

"No bolt," Tryk observed with some trepidation. An unrestricted droid? There were people giving droids freedom now, according to the news. But a droid with freedom might be capable of... anything.

Beggars couldn't be choosers.

It was an axiom that didn't exist in Jawa culture, where the beggars were often very good choosers. But Tryx had heard the sentiment spoken of among other beings, and now it finally made some sense to him.

The yellow eyes shifted again, taking note of the nearby corpse.

Tryk tensed.

"You kill?"

He nodded to the body- someone Voxum had been unable to save. But it might as easily have been a murder.

In Tryk's world, murder was much more likely.


Voxum

 

[Voxum]

"I saved them."

Voxum didn't even look back to the body, instead keeping their faceplate staring down directly at the Jawa. They reached a hand down, right for the hooded figure to basically snatch them up.

"Just as I will save you."

Tryk Zhot

 

[Tryk Zhot]

​

"I saved them..."

Tryk's eyes widened behind his vocoder mask and its polarized, reflective lenses. Some measure of the expression was surely filtered out to the outside world in a hue of yellow light.

Tryk had seen a sufficient amount of dead bodies in his time to know that the nearby figure was anything but saved.

The droid reached out, clutching at the Jawa's reddish-brown robes and lifting him up. Tryk wriggled inside of his clothes, dropping out and leaving the robe behind as he fell to the floor. As he slipped free from his Jawa robes, his vocoder mask caught on part of the fabric and was torn free.

The Jawa was now crouched on the 'ground' of this level of the city, wearing only his scrap armor and weapons harness. Blood seeped from a wound just under his left arm.

He regarded the rogue droid briefly, contemplating whether to do battle or to flee.

"Juwi Akriwi Nyeta medicul Dlaud!"

The Vocoder mask, still close enough- albeit lost within the folds of Tryk's discarded robes- spoke up in a low modulated voice, "You No Doctor Droid!"

Hope had turned to horror in this dark, urban alley.

Voxum

 

[Voxum]

"I never said I was."

Voxum tossed aside the robe as the Jawa fell from it. Their processor was already capable of translating the Jawese. They stepped forward, once again reaching up a hand. This time the Force reacted as the Shard within called upon it. Pulled on the Jawa with an invisible strength to tug them close. A crushing force, no less. The physical body wasn't what Voxum was there to save. "Do not resist. You are being rescued from the fate all with the curse of flesh suffer. I will save you."

Tryk Zhot

 

[Tryk Zhot]

A force gripped Tryk.

No... not 'a' force.

It was 'the' Force.

A droid that could use The Force?! Such a thing was too terrible to imagine.

Intangible fingers of kinetic energy became quite tangible enough, squeezing the poor Jawa as it held him aloft, pulling him in like a piece of iron drawn towards a magnet.

And crushed, like an orange in a vice.

The pressure made Tryk squeal in a language that required no interpretation.

His small gloved hand gripped his ion pistol as darkness threatened to smother him.

The pistol grip in his hand was his only lifeline. His only chance to escape. Tryk squeezed the trigger of the weapon, unleashing a brilliant white bolt of ionized particles in a final bid for survival.


Voxum

 

[Voxum]

​

"Do not struggle. It will only make it painful."

Voxum tightened their grip. Pulled the Jawa ever closer. All it'd take is a touch to their head, and Voxum would be able to download their consciousness. Eventually to put them in their eternal body. To let them feel the embrace of the Maker. Then, danger. Voxum filled with surprise before the shot hit them. Their voice distorted, broke as their shell of a body pretty quickly began to shut down from the ion energy.

"But all I w-w-want is t- sa- ou."

The body crumbled all at once, and the Jawa was released from the grasp around them.

Tryk Zhot

 

[Tryk Zhot]

​

Tryk let out a terrified squeal that he wasn't particularly proud of, and then the droid shut down.

The Force which had held Tryk aloft now faded, and he fell back to the floor.

For a moment, he gasped there, in pain from his injury, overloaded with adrenaline from what he presumed to be a near-death experience.

He had to go, find medical help, before he bled out... and before this droid reset itself and came back online. But he couldn't just leave, knowing this electronic menace would surely pursue others when it re-activated itself.

He withdrew a small, sharp tool from his pouch and began to carve into the outer shell of the droid, working quickly and without finesse, writing in the almost-universally understood Basic language of the galaxy.

Then, his warning scrawled, he scuttled off.

Tryk was feeling woozy.

How much blood had he lost?

How much more could he afford to lose?

This misadventure had cost him precious moments. He prayed he had enough moments left to him as he wandered into the corridors and turns of the endless city, looking for a clinic or black-market doctor for hire.


Voxum

 

[Voxum]

​

The droid could not move.

The Shard within, however, could. The moment Tryk tried to pry open the chassis the Force erupted in a wave to send them scattering away. Everything around the droid scattering away. It was all the Shard could do to defend themselves as the droid body slowly turned itself back on. As they waited for their fellows to arrive. More droids would be there soon enough. The Makerists would never abandon one of their own.

Tryk Zhot