Private Little Minnow In A Big Sea

[Haro Aven]

Jedi Padawan Niynx Ioune brings his late master's ship, The Little Minnow, to Jett Kaal's shipyard in the Coruscant Underworld for repair. Niynx's master, Jedi Knight La T'vil, was once an intimate companion and dear friend to Jett and her death weighs heavily on her heart. However, she puts on a brave face and invites the Padawan to her office to discuss what happened and what might become of The Little Minnow. Meanwhile Jett's apprentice, Haro Aven, goes to investigate the ship and begin diagnostics.

>_Coruscant Underworld |
>_Level 1312 |
>_Jett Kaal's Shipyard |

Haro Aven leaped down the remaining couple feet before the lift he was riding landed and took off toward the intake bay. He almost knocked his earbuds out but made sure to keep his data pad clutched close to his side so as not to drop it. Music thrummed in his ear as he ran, setting a pace to his footfalls along the durasteel catwalk. Having rushed to finish his routine maintenance schedule, he could finally go check out this GX-5 Mrs. Kaal had added to the repair list as a top priority.

He dashed around a corner, nearly colliding with the much larger form of Aibo, Mrs. Kaal's second in command. The hulking ardennian grunted and held out three of his four arms, nearly dropping his own data pad held by the fourth, as if he would try to catch and redirect the hasty Haro. The scrawny teenage boy reacted with uncanny speed and corrected his own path with a graceful shift in weight and a spin on his heel, long before coming in contact with the outstretched arms. Without slowing his momentum, Haro barked a surprised laugh then a passing apology to which Aibo just shook his head.

By the time Haro pulled up to the parked ship, he was winded but no less animated with excitement. His bright green eyes, the feature that most prominently set him apart from being human, took in the sight of the ship with apparent wonder and he wasted no time jogging up to the deployed ramp. He glanced over each shoulder as he did, running a hand through his mess of soot grey hair and pulling the headphones out of his ears to let them hang around his neck. He didn't see or hear anyone close by. It appeared no other mechanics had arrived on the scene yet and he assumed Mrs. Kaal was off chatting with the owner. So he trotted up the ramp and into the ship, that spark of fascination returning in full force, reflecting in his eyes like light through a green kyber crystal as he glanced about.

Absently, he slipped a round device from a holster on his thigh and held it out. The little device unfolded into a tiny insect-like droid resembling a beetle, it's wings extending to teach side before it took to the air with a faint buzz.

"Check it out, Bodie! How cool is this?" The boy exclaimed, giving the little droid an enthusiastic lop-sided grin as it drifted in deeper. BO-DE57, nicknamed "Bodie," projected a thin bar of bluish white LED light as it began scanning its surroundings.

Padawan Errant

 

[Niynx Ioune]

The air was thick with the acrid scent of burnt circuits and sooty metal. Wires dangled from exposed conduits and panels hung askew, their surfaces marred by ion scorching. System consoles with flickering holographic displays warned of damage, and shattered glass from broken and sealed off viewports littered the floor. Through it all though, through the battle damage and scars, a sense of history and camaraderie lingered here. Those scars told a story of survival, sometimes desperate survival and against great odds. Factory default bulkheads and terminal ports, holo-display banks and entire ship-systems had been ripped out and improved upon with the proficiency of military expertise. The result, The Little Minnow, a ship in possession of unyielding resources and unending dependability, a reminder that even in the face of overwhelming odds, hope endures...
​

• Coruscant Underworld​
• Level 528​
• Jett Kaal's Shipyard​

Blueish white light from BO-DE57's scanners passed over wreckage. Shelves knocked over and crates knocked open littered their contents into a chaos atop the floor. Small collections of debris which looked to have been sorted through made organized piles along the hangar's far wall. Behind Haro, silently, the dim orange light of a monitoring terminal glowed to life and a few nondescript lines of text scrolled briefly across an adjoining screen. Then, as quietly as it'd come to life, the station powered down.

> Access Security// ? [Sens_04?]​

Procesessing...​

> Decrypt [Run_//]​

(!) Sensor_Bypass _confirmed :Type [ _local#5] sub// :IDBO-DE57​

> Access Comms// ? [ _ID456023059 #holo_tag]​

> Sent​

​

Further inside, touch activated, rotating wall panels held state of the art power tools in neatly tailored holsters. A wall near the cockpit hung replete with an eclectic array of firearms and melee weapons, and across from that, a full suit of worn but sturdy looking, stylized body armor hung from a tacked-up netting of synth-cord. Similar netting hung like make-shift baskets in out-of-the-way places, holding droid salvage and spare parts. Despite the narrative most often spun of Jedi as pristine warriors with an almost noble serenity, The Little Minnow looked far more like the vessel of a big-game bounty hunter or Fringe type smuggler...

Haro Aven

 

[Haro Aven]

Haro took out his data pad as Bodie sent its initial observations, glancing down at it occasionally to sort through relevant information as the two of them worked their way deeper into the ship. It was uncommon for Mrs. Kaal's humble little shipyard to attract much more than the most basic and out of date vehicles and ships. When the occasional light freighter or fighter-class ship did port, Mrs. Kaal almost always took them for a private chat in her office and Haro was almost always one of the first on the scene, eager to learn its story of its journey across the stars. He'd found that most people didn't realize it but Haro felt like every ship had a personality and a story to share, much like droids or people did. This ship most certainly had a story and the young apprentice wanted nothing more than to unveil it.

The sheer level of value he found within the ship, both in terms of cargo and in terms of the ship's systems, had the teen's eyes wide like saucers and his mouth actually hung open when he found the eclectic weapons and suit of armor. However, what truly drew him like a moth to the flame were the spare parts. He approached the synth-cord baskets, gripping it and turning it about, ducking down, then getting up on his toes to try to peer through the openings in the woven holes at the contents, searching for something eye-catching. He spotted what he was sure was a small manipulator arm from an R2 unit astromech droid, a far more sophisticated tool than what Bodie was equip with and with a slightly further reach. Haro considered that he might be able to retrofit it to his little droid and decided he just had to try. Whoever owned the ship would probably never even notice it was even missing, he thought. He pulled a sturdy piece of debris over and climbed up on it so he could reach into the basket and dig through the parts, soon pulling the little arm free with a triumphant "ah ha!" before he tucked it into his pocket.

He leaped down and headed toward the cockpit where he could see the faint glow of Bodie's scanner, his subterranean ancestry allowing him to see easily in the low light of the powered-down ship. Once again, Haro was awestruck by the level of tech he found here but also the severity of the damage. What had happened to this ship, Haro wondered as he took a seat in the captain's chair. The boy's wild imagination spun visions of potential scenarios. A roguish smuggler at the helm piloting furiously, dodging the blaster fire from his rival who had been hired by a competing employer after the same mark. A little whirring beep from Bodie informing his master the initial scan was complete broke Haro from his daydream.

"Alight, let's tap in and see what's going on," the boy said to the droid as he nodded to the mainframe port and pulled out his data pad again. Bodie hovered down and lined itself up before a small probe extended from its round little body and docked the port. The little droid began muttering a fast paced series of digital clicks as if shifting through data. Haro leaned back, finding his fantasy again as he pulled up the manufacturer's information and basic stats of the ship on his data pad, this time imagining himself as the roguish smuggler, stranded on a random planet he'd escaped to, running diagnostics on his ship.

Niynx Ioune

 

[Niynx Ioune]

• Coruscant Underworld
• Level 528
• Jett Kaal's Shipyard

Having had to power down the Little Minnow's primary security functions during its initial repairs over Kuar, to the extent of even physically being required to dismantle some of the hardware responsible for housing those firewalls, encrypt routines, and micro-interactions, Haro was provided, and indeed bombarded, with a wealth of unbidden information. Ship logs and manifest details were forthcoming, gargled and flooding onto the datapad screen interspersed with a series of notifications warning against the potential risk of merging corrupted and incomplete files.

Bodie's class-5 processors were pushed to load limit almost immediately, trying as the little droid was to parse through the relevant information and determine between 'serious' or 'non-serious' cyber threats, and 'interesting' or 'uninteresting' data— according to Haro's pre-existing interest(s) algorithm. Hyper-trail logs from travel to remote and dangerous worlds, detailed damage reports from starship battles and obviously close encounters, and jump coordinates with encrypted names and attached data-packets scrolled across the screen. Quickly, one thing became very clear.

This was no ordinary passenger shuttle.

"Hello there," came a young and cultured sounding voice from the cockpit's entry hatch. Jedi Padawan Niynx Ioune stood there, well dressed in a set of newly minted robes and tunic from the Temple, hair a tousled wilderness atop his head, with kind eyes and a pleasant smile angled down to meet Haro's gaze. He rested one hand on the hatch's frame, a gesture which revealed the lightsaber at his side with a tug of the cloak.

Haro Aven

 

[Haro Aven]

At the sound of the new voice, Haro jolted upright in his seat and made to twist around so fast he practically tossed the data pad out of his lap. It momentarily tumbled out of control before he snatched it out of the air, standing and spinning to face the newcomer, all in one chaotically graceful motion. His startled expression only lasted a moment before it turned to a bright sheepish grin and he laughed a bit at his own reaction. He rubbed the back of his head with one hand while he tucked his data pad under his other arm, feeling the little droid arm in his pocket press into his side.

"Oh, uh, hi!" The teen's voice was still a tenor but was just beginning to drop and almost broke at the exclaimed greeting. Bodie, for their part, unhooked from the main port, bobbing dizzily as if drunk on an information overload. The tiny droid shook it's little beetle body and righted itself in the air before chirping in the newcomer's direction, as if noticing him for the first time.

Seemingly recovered from his initial shock, Haro eyed the person in the door way. The apparent age of the human-looking boy had thrown Haro off his initial assumption that he might be the owner or pilot of the ship. However, when his eyes found the lightsabers at the boy's belt, his eyebrows shot up in surprise, his brilliant green eyes reflected a sense of wonder and reverence when he found the boy's eyes again. He had read stories and listened to halonet dramas about the heroic jedi but he'd certainly never seen one in person, let alone spoken to one.

"I'm Haro. I work for Mrs. Kaal. I was just getting started on some initial diagnostics for... uh, your ship, right?" It was a friendly and earnest introduction made with surprising confidence for his young age and edged with a hint of the adrenaline.

Niynx Ioune

 

[Niynx Ioune]

• Coruscant Underworld
• Level 528
• Jett Kaal's Shipyard

Rocked by the boy's effervescent sense of enthusiasm, Niynx allowed his own expression to glimmer with a humorous smile.
"Right you are," he confirmed, pushing off from the hatch's frame and glancing about the cockpit. He nodded a greeting to Haro's droid, then slung himself into the co-pilot's seat and let the chair's rotation take him in a slowly moving spiral.
"At least, as of a few minutes ago anyway." When the chair circled back and the two came face to face again, Niynx's smile had taken on an impish quality, inspecting the boy carefully as if in search of something.
"I'm Niynx Ioune," he offered, "and this must be your droid, BO-DE57," he added, sagely. Never let them know which insights came from the Force and which came from elsewhere, his late Master had been fond of reminding him. To keep them guessing is the greatest tool of the Jedi Consular.
"An honor to meet you as well, my little friend. So tell me, Captain, how long before she's space worthy?"

Haro Aven

 

[Haro Aven]

Haro watched the newcomer as he moved to the co-pilot's seat as if he still wasn't sure he was real. However, his revery was broken when the young jedi's attention was directed to the droid.

"Oh yeah, this is Bodie," he added, momentarily caught up in the fact that he'd been forgetful in introducing his friend, then his keen eyes focused on the boy again, suddenly curious how he had known Bodie's full manufacturer's name. The little droid bobbed and trilled happily in response to the acknowledgment, it's two photoreceptor eyes dilating.

"Well," Haro began in response to the question with a cocky little smile, puffing up a bit at the address of "captain" and leaning back on the main panel across from the captain's seat. "Lucky for you, you brought it to the right place. With me working on it, it shouldn't take more than a couple days to get it fixed up and ready for action." He jabbed a thumb at his chest to indicate himself as he spoke, flashing a bright lop-sided grin. Despite his boasting, his youthful arrogance was tempered by his transparent innocence and vivid curiosity.

"So you're a jedi then, yeah?" He couldn't keep the wonder from his voice or his glittering gemstone eyes as he leaned in. "Do you know what happened to the ship?" His excitement propelled the questions rapidly but he managed to stop himself from asking anything more so as to give the boy a chance to answer.

Niynx Ioune

 

[Niynx Ioune]

• Coruscant Underworld
• Level 528
• Jett Kaal's Shipyard

Niynx grinned, glancing down at the weapon which so often gave him away. Still impish, he tapped its hilt and affixed Haro with a steady gaze.
"Who else would wear such a weapon?" He retorted in rapid fire, artfully declining to actually answer Haro's question. Then, leaning back into a similarly exaggerated, albeit naive, performance of confidence, Niynx glanced about the Minnow's cockpit and grinned.
"I should sure hope so," he said, diplomatically.
"After all, I was sitting where you are now when it got like this! Pirates," he admitted, electing for half truths.
"Pirates, and a particularly ill advised micro-jump through one of Kuar's asteroid belts."

Haro Aven

 

[Haro Aven]

Haro lit up at the mention of pirates, obviously thrilled at the prospect of an exciting story about the adventures of a Jedi straight from the source. He glanced at the captain’s chair before him as if imagining the young Jedi in the scene he described.

“Whoa! Well, I guess that would explain… all this.” He gestured to the chaos around them with a bit of a disbelieving chuckle, a wry wire sparking as if on queue.

“Y’know, you’re lucky to be alive, let alone have any ship left, after pulling a stunt like that,” he teased good-naturedly. Not that Haro himself had ever tried doing anything even close to that with a ship before, but he knew enough about it to know how dangerous it was.

“But you weren’t piloting it alone, right? Don’t Jedi your age usually have a master or something?”

Niynx Ioune

 

[Niynx Ioune]

• Coruscant Underworld
• Level 528
• Jett Kaal's Shipyard

Niynx soaked it all in, his eyes growing large instep with Haro's, his smile like a wildfire in the brush. But a shadow passed over his expression at the mention of masters and, just like that, his play at bravado came to an end. He made himself small, all of a sudden looking dwarfed by the over sized, adult sized, chair.
"Actually I was," Niynx said, somewhat absently.
"Alone, I mean, piloting alone." He had processed so much of that initial loss right here, too. Right in this cockpit, in the aftermath of the belt collision, in that very chair. He'd laughed, screamed, and cried here, tantrums he'd already committed to the long silence. Sitting here now, though, gave Niynx an odd sense of perspective. He'd made it back, he was safe now. He was still okay, he'd made it.
"I had just lost my Master, you see," Niynx said, his eyes burning as if someone had placed salt in them, rejoining Haro's gaze.
"She was the real ship's captain. I'm just lucky to be alive."

 

[Haro Aven]

In a moment, their shared youthful enthusiasm was snuffed out and replaced with the solemn weight of reality, the reality that death was never far away, even for a Jedi. Suddenly, Haro's perception of the valiant young Jedi, captain of his own ship who scraps with pirates, shifted as he looked upon a boy, not so different from himself, who had just lost someone he loved. He recognized the haunted look in Niynx's eyes and sympathy gripped his heart as his excitement melted away into pained concern. His brow knit together as he gathered his thoughts, trying to figure out what to say.

"Oh... I-" He thought to apologize for what had happened, for his loss, but the words felt so silly compared to the weight of that grief. So he composed himself and started over after a brief pause.
"I imagine your Master would be proud... that you made it out alive. And with her ship in tact too." His words held the gravity of the subject with a purity and a kindness which reflected in his warm smile, his own emotion twinkling behind his crystalline eyes.

Then he broke the solemn silence with a deep breath in through his nose, a look of determination overtaking his expression as if he had decided on something very serious.
"Alright. It's decided then." He planted his free hand on his hip stubbornly.

"You won't pay a single credit for my labor on this ship. I can't speak for Mrs. Kaal or the other mechanics of course but you can be sure you won't be charged for any of my time." Haro delivered his decision in a tone that left little room for argument.

Niynx Ioune

 

[Niynx Ioune]

• Coruscant Underworld
• Level 528
• Jett Kaal's Shipyard

Niynx bit at his lips, the remorse in his eyes betrayed by a burgeoning and shaky smile. Jedi or not, this boy brimmed with the touch of the light side, making of himself a servant for good. Niynx blinked away the pain in his eyes and swallowed the knot in his throat, then nodded over at Haro and took on a sly aspect.

"You have my gratitude," he confirmed.​

"Perhaps, then, you'll also permit that I tag along and help out where needed? The skills of a mechanic are not to be underestimated," he claimed, sagely, "and the aid of a Jedi can yield a great many unexpected successes." ​

​

Haro Aven

 

[Haro Aven]

The reward of Niynx's smile, shaky as it was, warmed Haro's heart and brought a small smile to his own lips in turn. He watched the boy compose himself and they slipped back into their playful banter with ease.

Haro's smile grew into a lopsided grin, betraying the excitement he felt at the prospect despite recognizing the sly undertone to Niynx's words and the kind way he asked for more from the transaction than just free labor. Haro had been prepared to defend his offer, thinking the humble Jedi would refuse and insist that he would be compensated. However, the young mechanic appreciated the cleverness he'd found in the unexpected yet goodnatured response and he was honestly thrilled at the prospect of hanging out with not only someone his age but a Jedi.

"Heh, sure, I guess I'll permit that," he began, playfully teasing the boy's formal words with his tone as he stepped up closer to where Niynx sat and took on a sly aspect himself.
"On one condition." He held up a finger. "You let me hold one of those lightsabers of yours and teach me a few moves."
His crystalline eyes glittered with excitement as they flicked down to where he'd seen the lightsabers hanging at Niynx's belt.
"Deal?" He held out his hand in an offer to shake on it.

Niynx Ioune

 

[Niynx Ioune]

• Coruscant Underworld
• Level 528
• Jett Kaal's Shipyard

Niynx stood suddenly and offered the other boy his hand, grinning as their palms clapped.

"Deal!" He exclaimed.​

"But we'll do it in the other order. Stances, moves, and safety practices first, then you hold the lightsaber." Decisively, Niynx withdrew his hand from the other's grasp.​

"I'll arrange the hours for my visitation with Mrs. Kaal on my way out."​

Respectfully, he gestured for Haro to clear his path and made towards the cockpit's exit, resting a hand on the hatch's frame and allowing for a moment of nostalgia.

"Well, I mustn't linger overlong. It's been an unexpected pleasure to meet you, Haro Aven. It brings peace to my heart knowing the Minnow's in good hands, she's been through a lot."​

​

Haro Aven ​

 

[Haro Aven]

Haro moved out of the young Jedi’s way before he was even fully conscious of what he was doing, a bit caught off guard by the sudden self-assured formality after they had shared a rather unexpectedly vulnerable moment but absolutely thrilled that his proposal had actually worked. Bodie bobbed to the side with a perturbed beep to avoid Haro bumping into it as he backed up. The little bug droid floated up to his shoulder where it landed and tucked away its little wings.

The way Niynx spoke, with practiced eloquence and wisdom beyond his years, still made Haro’s head spin as it seemed so at odds with his youthful appearance and the tenor of his voice. One thing was for sure, Haro considered, he had certainly never met anyone like Niynx before and he wondered if all Jedi were so… odd? The young mechanic’s grin returned after a moment’s contemplation.

“Oh, uh, yeah! Good to meet you too Niynx. Guess I’ll see you later,” he said, unable to hide his excitement at the prospect.

“Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of her.” He patted the consul beside him only for one of the durasteel cover panels further down to pop off and clatter to the floor of the cockpit. He grimaced at the loud noise and shot a look at Niynx like a guilty vornskr pup before a bashful grin lit up his expression and he laughed.

Niynx Ioune