I Thought You'd Be Taller ...

[Laura Na'Varro]

Sullust, Omega Protectorate sovereign space​

Outer Rim Territories​

She would find them here.

It was rare that you'd find a girl of twelve out by herself in the Outer Rim Territories. Sure, kids ran away from home all the time, but most didn't make it past the next district. Most didn't take their Dad's old Tachyon-class light freighter either. And most didn't have any idea of how to pilot, navigate or mechanically maintain said ship. Laura Na'Varro was not most kids. Her father's blood flowed in her veins, pretty much literally. She'd had access to every teacher her father could find for her, let alone her father himself. Her friends were all higher achievers than her, and had access to a stack of resources. Heck, if Laura had been taken out of her tank a year or two earlier, she might have been Knighted by now. She was a special child, and a lucky one. That was why she could survive out in the Outer Rim by herself ... not only was she surviving, she was living.

The spaceport markets were a buzzing hub of activity in Sullust's capital, held in one of the massive underground openings within Sullust's immensely complex tunnel system. Sullust itself was an interesting world. Uninhabitable above-ground, but with a huge population below the crust. Sullustans pressed around Laura, the hustle and bustle reaching feverish levels as the locals clamoured to get the best deal. Sure, the young Na'Varro looked happy enough eating her pally, but one hand was firmly on her cred-stick and the other near her concealed lightsaber. She hated crowds almost as much as she hated one on one social situations. Give me a holo any day over this crap.

They'll be here.

This was the third world she had searched. If she had Mara's ability and experience with instinctive astrogation, she'd have found them already, but Dressel and Iskalon had both been failed attempts. Clearly she had a lot of work to do if she was going to catch up with Mara ... or Aela or Micah, for that matter. However, Laura felt herself beginning to improve already, her knack with that sort of power meaning she was picking it up naturally. An excellent knack to have, as it turned out. This knack made her turn a corner and duck through the entrance of a cantina. Mr. Dak Dahl: Purveyor of Fine Beverages, it said on the sign. An odd name to be sure, but Sullust was a far different culture from what Laura was used to.

She came into a wide 'den' style opening, with wooden tables and stools and walls covered with racks upon racks of bottles of all shapes and sizes. Quite the cool scene. A classic cantina band played the ancient classic, Star Wars #1, in the corner, while a fair amount of patrons drank and chatted amongst themselves. All sorts of languages could be heard, coming from the the mouths of all sorts of aliens and humans, big and small. This is cool.

Laura climbed onto a stool at the bar and ordered a cran-pally juice, ignoring the odd look the bartender gave her. Or at least she thought it was odd. He was a Sullustan, after all.

[member="Ashin Varanin"] [member="Spencer Jacobs"] (jump in if you like )

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Laura Na'Varro"]

I sense something. A presence, one I've not felt in... Interesting. It's weak, and something about it is different, even radically different. There should be words for this; I should be able to quantify this. At the bar, Ashin raised a mug of lum to her lips, looking at nothing. It's as if...

...As if Alen Na'Varro was a thirteen-year-old girl.

She took a sip and set the mug down, evaluating herself for conspicuousness. That was her standard response whenever meeting people she knew was a possibility. While a large part of her didn't care who came after her for her crimes, she didn't consider herself an idiot. Besides. Recognition could threaten Spencer and Ibaris, not just herself. She stood from her bar stool, scanned the room-

And her right knee buckled, courtesy of about six injuries. Spencer had healed it once, but it had taken serious hits since then. That knee had no luck whatsoever. She caught the stool with a curse and held herself upright, barely. Time to bust out the gimer stick from storage.

She straightened up and scanned the room again, wishing she'd worn her helmet and armor. The helmet, a Tenloss model, would have given her an extra layer of anonymity. She adjusted her hood to obscure her face a little more.

 

[Laura Na'Varro]

[member="Ashin Varanin"]

Stretching out with her feelings, Laura searched for her prey and found nothing. Odd. Either she wasn't here, or she was concealing her presence within the Force. That was not uncommon, Laura knew. Her Dad could do that quite well. Within the sect he had worked in, he told her once, the ability to mask your Force signature was an ability of tantamount importance. Laura made a mental note to learn it. Taking a sip of juice, she turned her mind back to the task at hand. Setting aside the Force for a moment, she instead turned to the Mark I Eyeball as her investigation device of choice.

Her green eyes roamed the room from behind her hood, looking for someone distinctly human. The tables and chairs were almost entirely clear of humans, leaving the whiskey room and the bar ... out of the corner of her eye, she caught movement. A humanoid figure, conspicuously hooded, stood up and almost went down on her right knee. Laura's eyes narrowed. That fit the description, for sure. The young girl watched her out of the corner of her eye, deep in thought. This one is the one. But she wasn't one hundred percent about it ... there was a tinge of desperation and frustration to her thought pattern. Two failures in a row vexed the girl; she wanted a success, and quickly. So she made a move.

Sidling off of her bar stool, she approached the figure without approaching her, per se. Eyes focused elsewhere, she moved to the stool next to the figure and sat down. Took a sip of her juice. Put a hand into her robe and produced the hilt of a lightsaber. A special one. The hilt was conspicuous, the unnamed blade that had partly skewered Ashin Varanin on Rattatak by Alen Na'Varro's hand. He'd carried it for years. She'd recognise it.

Fearlessly, Laura looked up and towards the head of the hooded figure. Her eyes held a look of great significance.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Laura Na'Varro"]

The lightsabre registered as a weapon before it registered as a signifier, and Ashin flinched just slightly, preparing to deploy countermeasures if necessary. She hadn't gotten this far by underestimating lightsabres or the audacity of the young. Ten-thousand-degree plasma in a child's hands was still plasma. If the girl activated her weapon, that blade would run straight into a highly specialized Force shield on a hair trigger-

Then the sabre's identity sank in, and she relaxed before she'd consciously made the decision. The weapon tore itself from the girl's hand. It flicked across the intervening space to settle into Ashin's grip. A wide and wary circle formed immediately. She ignored the lot of them. Some things were more important than going unnoticed. A part of her found it invigorating, as if she'd been recalled to the aspects of life that actually mattered.

"If you're here to tell me that Alen Na'Varro is dead and you're his only child, well, I hate to break it to you. I'm not in the revenge business anymore."

 

[Laura Na'Varro]

"He's not dead." Laura studied the woman in front of her. She was not what she had expected. Still powerful, yet ... broken? Varanin had torn the weapon out of her grasp like it was nothing, but Laura knew that wasn't a signifier of true power. That lay within the eyes, and the woman before her had eyes that seemed overly affected by gravity. There was no pride there. "But I am his only child."

Laura folded her arms and frowned.

"He told me that you were the most deadly fighter he ever encountered. Are you?"

[member="Ashin Varanin"]