Private Long Way Down

[Kirie]

Coruscant Railspeeder Temple Line,
Coruscant
Sylvia Virtos

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It had been a long morning and Kirie hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep. The railspeeder was nearly empty, so she placed her feet up on the adjoining seat, yawning and rubbing her eyes. It was a pretty standard commute for her. Drop off Hana for her lessons at the temple, then sit in the rail car for 20 minutes trying not to fall asleep while it ferried her back to her stop a few levels down.

Kirie didn’t have much on for the morning, and she didn’t know how she was to fill the next few hours till Hana finished her classes. Maybe she could grab a bowl of something warm from the stalls next to the lodgings. Then she could catch up on a few hours of sleep.

The sound of a loud thump broke Kirie from her train of thought and she looked up. The car shuddered and the lights flickered above her head. She frowned. The lights flickered again and died, leaving the interior lit by a dim emergency strip. A moment later, the railspeeder slowed smoothly to a stop. Kirie sighed, waiting for the announcement from the driver that they were experiencing technical difficulties, but no voice sounded from the intercom.

A few people further up the cabin shifted in their seats and exchanged mumbled words. There was another thump from further up the cabin and Kirie’s skin prickled. She stood up slowly and started to make her way up to the front of the carriage.

“What’s going on?” Someone asked. Kirie shrugged in response.

“Not sure. Everything’s probably fine though.” she lied. In reality, dread was growing in the pit of her stomach.

Kirie moved into the next car, which had even fewer people. A young pink-haired woman with her head down caught her eye. She looked familiar somehow, but Kirie couldn’t quite place her. She gave the woman a tight smile and kept moving. She could see shapes further ahead, but in the dim red light it was difficult to make out much detail. What was happening? Kirie saw the glint of something metal in the hands of one of the figures and gasped, glancing at the pink-haired woman beside her. Had she seen it too?

“I think there might be trouble.” Kirie murmured.

 

[Sylvia Virtos]

There's trouble brewing
Kirie
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'Dead. Power was cut entirely. What in the nether?'

She took her hand off the nearby electrical panel Sylvia had opened up. Mechu deru could have helped her understand what had happened to the railspeeder, but the state it was in rendered that ability completely useless. What she could take a solid guess at, though, was the strong possibility that something fishy was going on. Sylvia would have been able to easily identify a regular malfunction; those did not cause the entire railspeeder to go dark. This was something else entirely.

A woman, on the older side, passed by as Sylvia tilted her head back up and looked around. It was too dark to take a good look at the stranger and had an exceedingly short amount of time to take in her features, yet she could have sworn the woman looked familiar. That mattered much less than the potential danger that was present, though. Walking around could be unsafe.

A wave of magenta bobbed up and down a few times as Sylvia hopped to the empty seat next to her and planted her feet into the walkway between the rows of seats, before standing up and catching up to the oddly familiar woman. Before she could warn her, though, the woman herself made it clear she was equally aware of the situation they were likely to be in. That was when Sylvia noticed a few more people further down the carriage, with glints of metal near their hands only serving to reinforce the bad feeling she had.

The woman's voice was just as familiar as her appearance, though this was not the time to contemplate that.

"Something's off," she responded in a hushed tone. "Let's sit somewhere, we don't want attention." Without waiting for a response, Sylvia retreated into the row of seats, taking one at a window and leaving the one next to her available.