Star Wars Roleplay: Chaos

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Private I'm Sure We Can Be Friends


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Kusana dropped from a very tall platform off the side of a building onto an adjacent rooftop. It was quite the fall, and she hadn't realized until almost too late due to the darkness in this part of the city, especially at this time of night. The rooftops here were only barely illuminated by the passing vehicles and the occasional flicker of a dying holographic billboard or two. Upon landing she had to roll and even then she paused for a moment to let the pain in her shoulder pass. Even when rolling, a fall from that height has too much force to distribute evenly.

The one she chased, a spherical droid that had caught her curiosity, swung via grapple hook some thirty to forty meters ahead. The same scarce light that illuminated the rooftops she navigated provided some glimpses of the droid through the night. It had been an hour or so since she started after it, but she wouldn't give up now. Too much time and energy invested. In for a penny, in for a pound. Other people called it the sunk-cost fallacy or, to use bigger words, Escalation of Commitment as Kusana had read it in a book her master had her read so long ago. She thought she had totally forgotten such things in the wake of time, but occasionally they did resurface for moments of clarity.

Still, in spite of her own psychology, she was beginning to question just how far she could run for this. Not questioning if it was worth it, but rather if she was physically capable. After all, the pain in her shoulder had found its way into her ankles as well. She was breathing heavily from the exertion, and she knew what that meant for her physiology. She needed to choose now: Keep going, and risk someone seeing them? Or do I stop now and lose track of it? She had to ponder the connotations of the first scenario carefully. The light is low and I can always reduce it further by wearing my hood. I doubt anyone could see my eyes in those conditions. So flipping up her hood, she decided to press on.
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|| Balldozer Balldozer ||
 

Balldozer

❝ Do Not Anger The Hamster. ❞
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Gizmo didn't want to admit how terrified he was. He could hear his heart thump loudly against his chest, enough to echo in his ears and make him wince every time without fail. He was hyperventilating, his breathing hitched and unsteady, frantic panting from within the mech that felt way too warm all of a sudden. He tried his hardest to blink away the tears beading in the corners of his eyes, but it was as fruitless an attempt as the act of running away was. He was a mechanic, an engineer; why didn't he use his brain just this once, when he needed to the most?

So was this it? A wanted criminal. That's what his life would amount to, now that he's finally free to make his own choices. As Balldozer rolls beyond the outskirts of Coruscant's upper levels, he just... stops. He's given up. Partly because he was certain the others had long given up on following him, and partly because he just wanted to give up. This wasn't going to get him anywhere... it only made him look even worse.

With a moment of peace he was certain wasn't going to last, the rodent lets himself breathe, in an attempt to recover from the near panic attack he had just suffered from.
Seems like today's just full of new experiences, he thinks to himself. With a drawn out sigh, Gizmo's eyes meet the night sky. It would be relaxing, under any other circumstance. Quiet-- as quiet as Coruscant ever got, anyway-- and peaceful and it's all he could have asked for. Something that would have to be put aside, it seems, as the mech's optical sensors detect a figure atop one of the nearby buildings. The fear and panic that had just left him flooded back in an instant, and the mech gets into its quadruped stance, raising its cannons.

"Do not come closer." The low voice states, soon before the central optic enables its internal flashlight with a click, waving it up to the figure. It's one he recognizes- he figured it would be- but it's one that gets his hopes up. Photoreceptor narrowing, Balldozer realizes that it's the same woman from before. The rodent perks up from inside the mech, only for the reality of the situation to dawn on him.

"Here to take me in, I suppose? Ha. Ha." For once, there's the subtlest shred of sadness in the mech's voice.

[ Kusana Kusana ]


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The light from the droid's torch illuminated as much of Kusana's face as the hood allowed. She was not sure if she had been identified or not, only that the droid was cautious of her. She decided to remedy this.

"Relax...Balldozer, right?" She removed her lightsaber from her hip and placed it on the ground slowly as a sign of pacifism. In the surprisingly soft luminescence of the environment, enough detail could be made out on the lightsaber to see it for what it was: practical, with minimal flourish apart from one indulgence. An emblem embossed and plated in gold on the metal of the blade emitter shroud. Even then, the emblem itself was practical in design.

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"I'm not here to take you in--or harm you for that matter." She raised her hands a bit, as if providing some symbolic surrender. "I just had some questions. Will you talk with me a while?" Her hood kept her eyes out of the light, but occasionally the blinding white light of the droid's torch would reflect off of them, and it would reflect red. However, her hair when it was illuminated was the same orange-purple haze.
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|| Balldozer Balldozer ||
 

Balldozer

❝ Do Not Anger The Hamster. ❞
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The question lays dormant in an air of thick tension. Balldozer wants to trust her - she'd seemed nice, and better yet, she was the only one not interested in capturing him, something that was backed up by her reassurance just now. Some company is what he needs, a friend to talk to and get his heart to stop pounding. Because he doesn't have any. He's met more locals than he can count, bargained with them, laughed with them, got upset because of them. But none of them- not a single one- had been a friend, nor were they interested in becoming one.

Gizmo stares at the lightsaber with defeated eyes, and he retracts his quad-cannons with a quiet whirr.
"Be my guest." The mech replies, the two sets of legs folding as to lower himself to the ground. For what seemed like an eternity, he didn't speak. Didn't add to his response, didn't question her further; he just stared. Not at her, but at the sky.

His eyebrows furrow, and he realizes he's being far too mushy and sentimental than he'd like.

"I never got your name. Or anyone else's for that matter." He cuts through the silence, the low hum of the mech's servomotors easing his mind now that he'd been given room to breathe. "Not that that's an option at the moment. Friends of yours?"

[ Kusana Kusana ]

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As the quad-cannons retracted, so too did her posture relax. Suddenly overcome by the exhaustion of an hour-long run, she flopped back onto the ground and lay there for a short moment before sitting up. She pulled her hood down and brought one knee up to her chin.

In the light it was all too obvious that her eyes were a pale red compared to what they had been earlier when she was with the group, and they peered straight at the droid. No, it was as though she were looking through the droid. Her gaze was locked right where she could feel some sort of presence. Away from the group and most other living things, even with her mediocre ability and understanding of the Force she was able to lock and hone in on that presence. She knew for sure now there was something, or rather someone, inside.

She just wanted to tread carefully.

"Where are you from?" The question had no build up, and it was clear she had larger questions, but she wanted to keep it simple right now.
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|| Balldozer Balldozer ||
 

Balldozer

❝ Do Not Anger The Hamster. ❞
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The question hit him like a truck. Mostly because it dawned on him how severely unprepared he was for answering questions, especially ones that are going to bleed into personal history. Nobody he'd ever met had pried him for details or asked who he was- they'd just accepted he was a droid, most likely from some random facility from some planet of no worth, and gone about their business. With how the woman stares at him- those red eyes piercing through his gaze behind the mech's optic- he can tell she suspects something.

Balldozer isn't sure if he's comfortable with her knowing the truth.

Brain wracking for a quick response, he turns the slightest amount. Not enough to look at her, but to inch closer in hopes that his answer would convince her further.
"I was manufactured on Geonosis for The Confederacy of Independent Systems. After years of war, I decided to become something different." He replies, and Gizmo hasn't skipped a beat. "I upgraded myself. Not the usual destroyer droid."

He finishes, and waits in silence for a few seconds before fully turning to her.
"Where are you from?" Balldozer asks, the rodent's eyebrow raised. A genuine question- despite the attempt to throw her off his case, he was still interested in knowing.

[ Kusana Kusana ]

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Kusana let the question hang a moment to maintain her unblinking stare. She was not nearly skilled or powerful enough in the Force to determine a lie from a truth, and with no other methods of distinguishing she was forced to accept what it said. She closed her eyes a moment, as if recalling. For a moment there was a flicker at the base of her hair as if it was igniting, but it quickly dissipated.

Where I was born...I don't know. Where I grew up...everywhere." She let out a small sigh, as if she had been holding her breath. "I was dragged around as a kid," the ignition of her hair became apparent again. It crept a little further this time, and a couple very small wounds opened up on her neck and face as though a flame burning through the center of a piece of paper. She took a couple deep breaths and though her eyes were now almost giving off their own red light, her hair and skin were returning to normal.

She smiled momentarily knowing how obvious that little transformation was. "Have you ever seen someone like me before?" The tone with which she asked that question said she was joking around to lighten the mood, but the content of the question and the look on her face could easily be taken to mean that she was genuinely curious.
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|| Balldozer Balldozer ||
 

Balldozer

❝ Do Not Anger The Hamster. ❞
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Balldozer feels a wave of relief wash over him, reclining in the padded seat within his mech. Thank the stars she hadn't pestered further, because his knowledge of the galaxy was limited to the research he had done in his spare time on Aleen. It's as if the last thread of tension lingering between them had dissolved, and all that remained were the speckles of doubt hovering around his lies. He bit the inside of his cheek; because really, he did feel bad. A liar and a subsequent criminal wasn't what he expected himself to end up as.

From inside the droid, Gizmo's eyes widen the subtlest of amount, observing with deep intrigue (and mild fear-) as the woman's skin cracks open. It was hauntingly beautiful, and oddly satisfying- such gorgeous shades hidden within. Balldozer isn't certain what to make of it, but he holds his tongue in order to silence the thousands of questions he so desperately wants to ask. He doesn't think it's his place to ask for more details.

So instead, he replies,
"Not at all." As if the staring and gaping jaw hadn't given that away- not like she could see that, anyway. "I hadn't seen a lightsaber before today, let alone... that. It's beautiful."

Silence hangs over them once more. In a way, he detests that she'd shown him such a display. He was unable to read the intention- whether it was a sign of vulnerability to get him to trust her, or a reflex that occurs involuntarily, or anything in-between. But he feels even guiltier now. Now that she may have disclosed something personal to him, and he'd just blatantly lied to her.

There's the sound of quiet metal against the floor as he fidgets.
"You really want to know who I am, don't you?" Balldozer asks, and it feels like it's rhetoric, with more that needed to be said.

[ Kusana Kusana ]

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She lowered her knee to the ground and brought both legs together to sit cross-legged. She brought a hand up to her neck and rubbed the spot one of the wounds had appeared and disappeared so quickly only moments before. She let out another sigh, again as though she had been holding her breath. When she looked up at Balldozer her eyes were noticeably less red. Almost their original color, though with every one of those occasional deep breaths that find themselves into a normal breathing pattern, they did regain some of that crimson.

"Yeah, I do." She removed her hand from her neck and placed it on top of her knee, the opposite hand was already on the other. She looked quite attentive.
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|| Balldozer Balldozer ||
 

Balldozer

❝ Do Not Anger The Hamster. ❞
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A response remained firmly stuck on Gizmo's tongue, his throat tight with a sudden rush of anxiety. Like it were wedged in and trying to claw itself out, the rodent finds himself choking on his own breath- muted from within the mech that hadn't translated anything. She would be the first person to see his real identity, to see who he truly was. And Balldozer hesitates; he feels like he's rushing into things, blindly trusting this woman who had shown him the most basic of sympathies. So what if she was the first person he had ever truly connected with. The first person since his birth to show him the time of day. Perhaps he was too starved of interaction and companionship that he wanted to show her. He doesn't quite understand it, and part of him doesn't want to.

Eyeing her as she shifts in place, Balldozer lets out a mechanical sigh.
"I don't know why you want to know so badly. Nobody has ever cared." He says, but he nonetheless knows not to keep her waiting. The faster he can get this over with, the less anxiety there would be in his rapidly-beating heart. Ever so slightly, the mech tips itself forward, as if to draw her attention to the firmly sealed panel atop its spherical body.

There are a few seconds of silence, of pure reluctance, before it pops open with a hiss of steam, steadily lifting itself up. Seconds after, a short, portly rodent emerges from it; hands pulling himself up, his leg kicking the air before climbing on top of the mech and taking a seat. He's got a look of shame printed onto his features, eyes refusing to meet hers. A hybrid of loth-cat and loth-rat.

Gizmo furrows his brow, and he lets out a series of high-pitched garbled squeaks.
"This isn't what you expected, is it?" He says, but the voice once again comes from the mech. "I was an experiment on Aleen. Nobody alive has seen who I really am but you."

Without the mask of his mech, Kusana can finally identify just how sorrowful he really was.


[ Kusana Kusana ]

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Kusana stared blankly for a few moments. Internally she was deciding whether it was appropriate to laugh--not at him but with him. Was he really so anxious about this? Externally, it was a beat or two before she let out a small chuckle.

"I'm sorry, I--" she let out another laugh, this one was louder and more animated on her face even though she had expected it this time and tried to suppress it. "Dozer, you didn't have to be scared to show me this." She leaned forward and reached out a hand. It wasn't clear, to her especially, whether she wanted to pet him or make some other form of friendly contact.

As her hand reached out she spoke again. "I'm glad you showed me who you are, though." Her voice was softer now, a calm and reassuring smile on her face like the one she saw her master use when she was frustrated with training.
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|| Balldozer Balldozer ||
 

Balldozer

❝ Do Not Anger The Hamster. ❞
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Gizmo wasn't quite sure how she was going to react, but laughter was... definitely up there, honestly. Not that he saw anything bizarre in a hyper-intelligent rodent piloting a wrecking ball mech, but he figured others would be alarmingly puzzled by it. No matter how much he expected it, it still wasn't enough to keep him from puffing his cheeks out, furrowing his brow as his face is flushed a bright shade of red.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,"
he squeaks, the mech's voice encapsulating the rodent's disappointment flawlessly. That being said, not even Gizmo can resist the smile tugging at the corners of his lips; the woman's laughter was contagious, and soon there was a series of high-pitched, squeaky giggles meeting the air alongside a blissful sigh of relief.

And truthfully, he wanted to relish in the feeling, because he hadn't had this sincere and personal a connection in ages. She wasn't angry, or upset, or out to get him. And as that reality settled in on him, he felt his laughter get louder and louder.

"You're. Going. To. Regret this." The mech jokes, incapable of translating the laughter he'd try to stiffle between words. Watching her trail an arm out, he would instead climb onto it, walking along her limb on all fours before taking a seat on her shoulder.

His squeaks some more, his face bright and happy.
"My real name is Gizmo. It's nice to meet you... properly."

[ Kusana Kusana ]

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With Gizmo on her shoulder, Kusana stood up and grabbed her lightsaber hilt with the Force, pulling it back to her hip where it almost always was. She adjusted her robes to cover it once more and looked over at her new friend. "It's nice to meet you, too, Gizmo." She wanted to continue their conversation but the recent run and the oppressive darkness were starting to take their toll on her ability to stay awake. "I'm returning to my ship for the night. It's getting too late to be out for me." She barely suppressed a yawn. "What do you say? Wanna travel together?"
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|| Balldozer Balldozer ||
 

Balldozer

❝ Do Not Anger The Hamster. ❞
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Half-asleep, Gizmo feels his ears twitch, and as they had turned to leave for the ship, the rodent feels the hairs on his back stand up. With tired eyes, he looks back, only to see... them. A sudden jolt of fear as his heart sinks, Gizmo's woken up, letting out a series of quiet, worried squeaks. Instinctively, he hides behind Kusana, peeking out from atop her shoulder, clinging to tightly. Just as instinctively, Balldozer-- the mech-- takes a few steps forward in front of the two, and unearths its dual quad-cannons.

"Do not touch them," the mech orders, its optic narrowed as it idly scans the Jedi before it. Gizmo hadn't spoken, or even ordered it to do anything... it must be acting on the small amount of AI he had programmed it with. Under the guise of an innocent, small pet, Gizmo hoped that the two intruders would still believe the mech is the perpetrator.

[ Kusana Kusana | Dagon Kaze Dagon Kaze | Damsy Callat Damsy Callat ]

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An hour. Or more. An unrelenting pursuit through the so familiar rooftops of Coruscant with Damsy in tow after a mechball menace. It's now how Dagon imagined his night would go. Focus on the tracking down the ball, Dagon and Damsy barely exchanged any words unrelated to the chase at hand. He was fixated, he felt alive. Skipping over rooftops in somersaults, swinging himself off ledges - liberating.

They asked denizens, followed faint oil trails and holes made recently by grappling hooks were all the leads he had... and the Force; for it was no droid he was chasing but a being rolled inside a ball of steel. Its presence in the ethereal left lingering trails of pure fear and panic.

The dynamic duo finally found their runner on an adjacent rooftop. He put his foot on the railing and leaned forward. He blinked once, twice, then asked Damsy, "That's...the girl from earlier, isn't it?" this just gets weirded by the minute...accomplices?

T
he Jedi didn't wait for an answer as he hopped down on their rooftop landing gracefully on both feet. He wiped the sweat of his brow demonstratively, then placed both hands on his waist, "You sure can roll fast, huh?"

"Don't think they make cuffs your size, lil' guy." he smirked, "So you'll just have to accompany me to the precinct. Both of you actually."

With the turbulence between the Senate and the Jedi, chasing bulldozing mech balls was the last thing he wanted to be doing.

Damsy Callat Damsy Callat | Balldozer Balldozer | Kusana Kusana
 
will you sink down to me?
Damsy ground to a halt somewhere behind the railing to catch her breath propped up on her knees and out of the Knight's physical sight. She stayed more or less there, or the rooftop, when he jumped over to confront one being they knew they had been chasing and another they hadn't, simply moving up to the railing to take her turn and lean on it.

It wasn't a Force trick to feel her hesitance.

"Got it from here, bro?" She slung the question down the way with a voice risen to overcome Coruscant's ambience. "I gotta...uh..." Ashla, Dams, just lie some bantha poodoo. Then it came to her. "...the boys get bad vibes from me." Shrugging in case he looked, she hoped Dag caught on to the excuse's intended insinuation: they were somehow piecing the clues that she was Sithspawn together. Technically, it wasn't an entire fabrication--the CSF had good reason to have a funny feeling about her--Damsy just didn't actually know that. All she did know was that she didn't want to run into someone she did know she knew, after someone she didn't an hour before.

The less she had to stumble through explaining to Dag the better.



**
Dagon Kaze Dagon Kaze | Balldozer Balldozer | Kusana Kusana
 
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Kusana had been expecting to be followed by some of the others.

She had been expecting it, but she still didn't want it to happen.

"We're really tired," she began. "Can we at least get some rest before doing this dance?" She was much calmer than she was during their last encounter. She knew it was due to her own techniques of keeping herself calm. She was hoping she could slip away if they allowed her to "get some rest", but she also knew they were not foolish enough to fall for that.

No harm in trying though.
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Balldozer Balldozer || Dagon Kaze Dagon Kaze || Damsy Callat Damsy Callat
 

Balldozer

❝ Do Not Anger The Hamster. ❞
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Half-asleep, Gizmo feels his ears twitch, and as they had turned to leave for the ship, the rodent feels the hairs on his back stand up. With tired eyes, he looks back, only to see... them. A sudden jolt of fear as his heart sinks, Gizmo's woken up, letting out a series of quiet, worried squeaks. Instinctively, he hides behind Kusana, peeking out from atop her shoulder, clinging to tightly. Just as instinctively, Balldozer-- the mech-- takes a few steps forward in front of the two, and unearths its dual quad-cannons.

"Do not touch them," the mech orders, its optic narrowed as it idly scans the Jedi before it. Gizmo hadn't spoken, or even ordered it to do anything... it must be acting on the small amount of AI he had programmed it with. Under the guise of an innocent, small pet, Gizmo hoped that the two intruders would still believe the mech is the perpetrator.

[ Kusana Kusana | Dagon Kaze Dagon Kaze | Damsy Callat Damsy Callat ]

[OOC: Sorry for the delay. Been busy and tired, so much so that I accidentally edited my last post to be this one instead of posting it. So whoops-]

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He couldn't really make out Damsy's words but could sense the hesitance enveloping her; it raised question, but questions for another time.

Right now, there's a wish.holo droideka staring down at him.

It's a stand-off.

Last thing on his mind was facing off an automated mechball, an oddly looking Nezumi and the mysterious girl from earlier. For an investigator of his caliber, Dagon had zero ideas what the hell really was going on. What peeved him slightly was the fact neither of them looked like the usual goons doing trouble in the Coruscanti underlevels.

Alright, I'll play this game...

"So, who exactly are you two and why did you wreck a whole building?" he asked, ignoring the droid's warnings.

Damsy Callat Damsy Callat | Balldozer Balldozer | Kusana Kusana
 

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Kusana flicked her eyes around the scene, trying to find the second person she was almost certain would have come with him. She didn't know who she was looking for, but she did see a figure atop a nearby building. That had to be them.

With her eyes still fixated on the figure, she spoke--demonstrating that she knew of the second person. "You saw that I had nothing to do with those explosions." She returned her gaze to the man in front of her. "What you didn't see," she lifted her index finger at the spherical droid. "Is what this droid was doing before them. Maybe he--...it was simply thrown back by the force of them."

She stopped momentarily to consider how well her lie was going so far. Her conclusion: she had already fumbled a pronoun and now suspicion was just going to get worse.

It was only then she considered the fact that she was a terrible liar.
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Balldozer Balldozer || Dagon Kaze Dagon Kaze || Damsy Callat Damsy Callat
 
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