Private O brother, where art thou?

[Elian Abrantes]

Naboo
Near Dee'ja Peak
Objective: Search
Shade
Indirect: Sibylla Abrantes (FYI) ​

The lake wind moved softly through the broken reeds along the edge of the impact site, stirring ash that should have settled days ago but somehow still refused to rest. Elian Abrantes stood at the perimeter markers the Republic engineers had left behind, their clean white stakes already leaning slightly into the damp Naboo soil as if even they were tired of pretending the investigation was finished. Cassian's ship had come down hard here, too hard for an accident and too precisely for chance, and the silence around the wreckage felt wrong in a way Elian could not explain. Naboo was supposed to be gentle ground, but today it felt like a grave pretending to be a garden.

The hull fragments had already been hauled away, the larger debris cataloged and removed by Intelligence teams who had combed the area with scanners and drones and careful boots that left neat patterns in the grass. They had called it thorough and professional and complete, and Elian had nodded when they told him that because it was easier than arguing with people who believed paperwork meant truth. Cassian did not simply vanish into clean reports and sealed evidence containers, and he did not crash without fighting back, and he did not disappear because he chose to. Someone had taken him, and Elian could feel that certainty settling into his bones like cold iron.

He crouched near the shallow scar where the ship's forward section had carved into the earth before breaking apart, running his gloved fingers through soil that had already been disturbed too many times by strangers pretending to care. The ground still held faint impressions beneath the official tracks, small inconsistencies that scanners ignored but instinct noticed, and Elian trusted instinct more than any Republic sweep. Cassian had been ambushed here, cornered here, and dragged away from here by people who expected no one important to come looking after the noise died down.

For a moment the thought crept in uninvited, ugly and persistent, carrying Aurelian's voice with it like a bruise that never quite faded. Maybe Cassian really had been exactly what Aurelian said he was, reckless and useless and destined to disappear into the kind of trouble no one would come look. Elian's jaw tightened as he stared across the quiet lakeshore, and he forced the thought out of his head before it could settle anywhere permanent.

He had learned about the crash almost a week after it happened, first from Sibylla and then from news reports as he wnet back to see them.. By the time he understood what he was seeing, reading, the search teams had already come and gone, the official conclusions already written, and his siblings already grieving in their own separate ways without him. He knew that should have mattered more to him than it did right now, but grief had a way of narrowing the world until only one thing remained visible. Right now the only thing that mattered was Cassian.


Elian rose slowly and looked out across the water again, studying the shoreline as if the land itself might finally decide to speak. Intelligence believed there was nothing left here worth finding, but Intelligence had not grown up with Cassian and they had not spent years learning how often he survived situations he never should have walked away from. Somewhere between the broken reeds and the quiet surface of the lake, something had been missed. Elian intended to find it, even if it meant tearing the truth out of the ground himself.

Unfortunatley there was only so much a one armed eighteen year old kid could do.

Yes, that one arm issue needed to get fixed in a hurry.

 

[Shade]

The wind shifted with a subtle grace, barely enough to register against the lake's constant breath, yet it carried a clinical sharpness that did not belong to the hollow quiet the Republic had left behind. Shade did not approach with any sound that would announce her presence; instead, she seemed to manifest from the shadows of the shoreline itself. One moment, Elian stood alone amid the remnants of a lie dressed as an investigation; the next, she was simply there. She took her place a few paces behind and to his left, her presence radiating the same controlled, deliberate gravity that defined her every movement.

Her gaze swept across the site with practiced efficiency, bypassing Elian initially to dissect the scene. She noted the precise placement of markers, the specific way the soil had been disturbed, and the suspicious pattern of removal that spoke of a sanitized crime scene rather than a raw impact. After a long, heavy pause, she finally spoke.

"They cleared it too cleanly, Elian," she said, her voice low and even, cutting through the silence without shattering it. "It is evident that they have already decided what this story was supposed to be before they even arrived to tell it."

Only then did her attention shift toward him. It wasn't a look of pity, but one of profound alignment, her focus remaining partially anchored to the ground as if she were reading the truth written in the dirt.

"Resignation, departure, civilian movement, and then a convenient disappearance," she continued, tilting her head with precise calculation. "That narrative is not designed for accuracy; it is designed for containment. It is a way to wrap a tragedy in enough bureaucracy to make people stop asking questions."

She took a few steps forward, her boots finding the gaps in the sand where the official investigators had failed to tread. As she crouched near the scar he had been studying, she reached out with a gloved hand, pressing lightly into the soil to feel the structure beneath the surface.

"This is not how a crash site looks when it is simply processed by engineers," she observed, her voice softening just enough to acknowledge his own grim conclusions. "It is how a site looks when something vital is removed before the official history can be written. You are correct to trust your instincts here. He did not go down without resistance, and he certainly did not leave this place by his own choice."

She rose with a fluid, smooth motion, her posture settling into a vigilant stillness as she mapped out the extraction vectors along the shoreline.

"This entire sequence was controlled, which means it was meticulously planned, and planned operations always leave patterns for those who know how to look," she said, finally meeting his eyes with a gaze that was steady and unbreakable. "We will find them, Elian. That is not a promise born of hope, but a conclusion based on the trail they think they erased."

Her gaze flicked briefly to his arm, a glance that was purely analytical. Acknowledging the challenge without letting it define him.

"You do not need to exhaust yourself by trying to tear the truth out of the ground with force," she added, her tone carrying a rare, quiet thread of support. "You only need to read what they were too arrogant to realize they left behind. Stay with me, and we will start exactly where their story begins to break."

Elian Abrantes

 

[Elian Abrantes]

Naboo
Dee'ja Peak
Objective - Search
Shade
Indirect: Sibylla Abrantes ​

"They cleared it too cleanly, Elian," she said, her voice low and even, cutting through the silence without shattering it. "It is evident that they have already decided what this story was supposed to be before they even arrived to tell it."

"Resignation, departure, civilian movement, and then a convenient disappearance," she continued, tilting her head with precise calculation. "That narrative is not designed for accuracy; it is designed for containment. It is a way to wrap a tragedy in enough bureaucracy to make people stop asking questions."

Elian turned as he faced Shade, looking at her briefly with frown on his face. "What are you saying? Are you saying Intelligence and the Military planned this, covered it up?" Elian let out a small sigh.

"Cassian has given his life in service of this planet. I do not believe they would have just covered it up to prevent questions from being answered." Elian kicked at the dirt before he shook his head and knelt down.

"My brother wasn't perfect, but they wouldn't toss him aside like. Gods forbid they were involved, who knows who else might be in on it. Aurelian might have been one of them. Everyone knows the hatred that he harbored for him, hell he tried to kill him once."

Elian's mind was racing in several different directions right now, all didn't make sense. But he was angry right now, anger usually amplied everything. Especially when family was invovled.

"When was the last time you saw him?"

 

[Shade]

Shade did not interrupt him, allowing the anger to run its course while she watched him with a steadiness that neither challenged his frustration nor yielded to it. There was no tension in her posture and no visible reaction to the names he invoked or the volatile direction his thoughts threatened to spiral; instead, she simply remained present, giving him the necessary space to reach the edge of his outburst before she attempted to speak.

When she finally did, her voice was low and even, carrying none of the jagged sharpness that had defined his own.

"No," she said quietly, the single word sounding firm without being forced. "That is not what I am saying at all."

She shifted slightly, a subtle adjustment that brought her a fraction closer. It was not enough to crowd him, but sufficient to ensure her presence became something grounding rather than distant. Her gaze held his, remaining steady and clear as she bridged the gap between them.

"They did not do this to him," she continued, her tone measured and deliberate, "but they are absolutely controlling every detail of what happens in the aftermath."

Her eyes moved briefly across the site, taking in the clinical placement of the markers, the carefully disturbed earth, and the conspicuous absence of anything left behind that might speak too loudly to the public, before her focus returned to him.

"Because of exactly who he is and the weight his name carries, they simply cannot afford not to manage the situation," she explained, her voice carrying an understanding not just of military systems, but of the precarious position Cassian had earned through years of dedicated service. "If this site is left exposed without immediate answers, his disappearance becomes something far larger and more dangerous than a missing person case; it becomes a source of systemic uncertainty that raises questions they are not yet prepared to answer."

A faint pause followed, not out of hesitation, but from a deliberate care in how she chose to frame the reality of their situation.

"So they secure the perimeter, they remove every scrap of physical evidence they can study in a lab, and they limit what is seen by the public until they truly understand the nature of what they are dealing with," she said, tilting her head slightly while her gaze never left his face. "That is not them discarding him or treating him as expendable, Elian; it is them desperately trying to maintain a grip on a situation that is rapidly spinning out of their comprehension."

There was something quieter in her tone now, a shift that wasn't a softening of her resolve, but a sharpening of her intent. Her eyes dropped briefly to the ground between them, tracing the same subtle inconsistencies he had noticed earlier, before lifting to meet his again.

"But they will inevitably miss things because they are looking for evidence that fits a pre-written report, rather than searching for the small, jagged pieces of the truth that do not belong in their narrative," she added, her voice dropping to a near whisper.

When he asked his question, there was the smallest shift in her expression. Nothing that was visible to a casual observer, but present in the sudden, absolute stillness of her gaze.

"I saw him not long before this happened," she answered, the words simple but heavy with a shared history. "And in that moment, he was exactly where he intended to be."

A brief pause stretched between them, thick with the weight of the admission.

"He was with me."

She offered no further elaboration or empty comfort, letting the truth stand as an immovable fact in the center of the clearing.

"He was not preparing to disappear or seeking an exit from his life, which means this entire event was forced upon him by an outside hand," she continued, her voice returning to that quiet, controlled certainty that acted as its own kind of armor. "And whoever orchestrated this operation clearly expected that a clean site and a sanitized report would be enough to bury the trail forever."

She made a slight, dismissive motion of her hand toward the cleared impact site, her eyes hardening with a cold, focused light.

"They are about to discover that it is not nearly enough to stop us from finding the truth."

Elian Abrantes

 

[Elian Abrantes]

Naboo
Dee'ja Peak
Objective - Search
Shade​

"i mean, they do have a job to do. I don't know the in's and out's of the Intelligence and Military aspect of cleanup. But I would hope it is very thorough." Elian knelt down, noticing some components on the ground. Honestly, simply trash that couldnt' help anything.

"A few people I could list off the top of my head that could be response for this. It just doesn't make sense."

Elian looked back to Shade. "Was there anyone that was looking to hurt either of you?"

 

[Shade]

Shade let him speak, her attention drifting briefly to the scattered debris at his feet before returning to him with a quiet, uncritical acknowledgment. She didn't offer a contradiction to his hopes regarding the thoroughness of the investigation, though her gaze lingered on the ground as if seeing the gaps the official teams had stepped over. "It is thorough," she agreed, her voice even and calm, "just not complete."

She did not answer his question immediately, not for a lack of information, but because she was carefully measuring how much of the truth to share with the younger Abrantes. "Cassian was reluctant to share the full extent of his enemies with me," she began, her voice steady and devoid of any frustration. It was a simple statement of fact, a reflection of the privacy they had both maintained even in their closeness. "The only specific threat I was aware of was eliminated last year, and beyond that, he did not speak of his past adversaries in any great detail."

Her gaze shifted outward toward the horizon, tracing a cold line of thought before settling back on Elian with a sharpened intensity. "There are my own enemies to consider, however," she added, her tone dropping into a quieter, more certain register. She didn't offer the information as a warning or an excuse, but rather as a clinical variable in a lethal equation. "But my enemies do not act without purpose, and they do not orchestrate a disappearance of this magnitude unless there is something significant to be gained from the effort."

A faint, deliberate pause followed as she let the weight of that reality settle between them. "Which means whoever did this was not acting blindly or out of simple malice," she concluded, her eyes locking onto his with unwavering focus. "They moved with intent, and they did so knowing exactly who he was and what he represents."

Elian Abrantes

 

[Elian Abrantes]

Naboo
Dee'ja Peak
Objective - Search
Shade ​

"Unless your enemies took him to get at you." Elian responded quickly, which was an obvious result. But it wasn't factual, they had no proof, there was nothing here. Elian looked around, his eyes scanning the ground, what in the hell could they find that was somehow missed by those who made this sort of thing their job and life. He kicked at the ground with a frustrated sigh.

"There's nothing here, just bullshit. Gods I hate this, all of it."

Elian had no idea where to start, it was just as useless as before. This was a dead end, he thought back to things a year ago. How did everything turn from good to just a complete shit show.

"There has been no ransom, nothing, its been almost a month already. He's either dead, or they dont' care about his status. That was our punishment, to take him from us."

Elian walked passed shade, moving back towards the speeder. "This entire thing was a mistake, all of it." He wasn't speaking of the abduction, he was talking about everything that led up to it. He couldn't wait until he graduated the academy, as soon as he did he was out of here.

Elian stopped for a moment and he looked back to Shade. "Do your enemies know you are here?"

 

[Shade]

Shade did not move when he turned away.

She let him take the distance, letting the frustration carry him forward without trying to cut it off too early. While there was no tension in her posture, her attention never left him; she watched the way he moved and the way his anger settled unevenly, searching for a target but finding none. As she watched, the sharp, clinical edges of her focus softened, replaced by a quiet, heavy stillness that spoke of a shared burden rather than mere observation.

When he looked back and asked the question, she did not hesitate, though her voice carried a resonant, hollow depth it hadn't held moments before.

"They do."

The answer came plainly, without softening or deflection, but she stepped forward with a slow, deliberate grace that closed the space between them. She wasn't cornering him; she was anchoring him.

"They attacked us both a few months before he went missing," she continued. Her tone remained steady, but there was a faint, jagged friction beneath her words, a sign that these were not just facts, but memories that still had teeth. "This is not their usual method, but it is not unheard of."

Her gaze held his, and for a rare moment, the mask of the operative slipped, revealing a flicker of something raw and deeply tired.

"They kept my sister captive for several years before she died," she added. The words were delivered with her signature precision, yet her voice caught, just once, on the final syllable. She didn't pause for sympathy or shift her composure, but the way her fingers curled slightly at her sides betrayed the ghost of a grief that had never truly left her.

She drew a long, quiet breath, letting it out slowly as if exhaling a weight.

"If they are the ones who took him, there will be no ransom," she said, her voice dropping to a murmur that felt more like a shared secret than a tactical brief. "They do not take people to bargain, Elian. They take them for a reason, and they do not stop until that reason is satisfied."

Elian's frustration lingered in the space between them, and instead of dismissing it, Shade reached out. It was a brief, uncharacteristic gesture—a hand resting for a second on his shoulder, her touch firm and grounding.

"Everything is not a mistake," she said, her voice anchored by a sudden, fierce warmth. "You are trying to force an answer from a place that was designed to remain silent, but that does not mean you have failed."

Her eyes flicked briefly toward the cleared ground, the absence where something should have been, before returning to him with a look of profound, quiet trust.

"It means you are looking for something that was already taken. So, stop looking for what should be here," she guided, her tone losing its iron edge and becoming something more like a plea for him to see what she saw. "Start looking for what should not be. The inconsistencies. The things that were added to hide the truth."

She held his gaze, her expression open in a way that left no room for doubt.

"You will figure it out," she added, her voice softening until it was a mere thread of certainty. "You already are, Elian. I can see it. You just have to narrow the world down until only the truth remains."

She let that settle, her hand slipping from his shoulder, but her presence remaining closer than before.

"Start with what does not fit. Everything else will follow."
Elian Abrantes

 

[Elian Abrantes]

Naboo
Dee'ja Peak
Objective - Search
Shade ​

Elian shrugged his shoulders and took a long exhausted sigh that bordered on frustration and the feeling of helplessness. They were both attacked before? Was this even reported? Why was Elian first hearing about it now? Did any of them hear about it at all? If so, it could've been prevented, maybe? Possibly?

Who really knew, but he knew he was tired of being kept in the dark about things. All of them, Cassian, Sibylla keeping things from him because they were trying to protect him. Or whatever else they were doing. But yet he was doing the same thing, keeping them in the dark about things and Elian was being crucified for it.

Ignorance at its finest, its exactly what it was.

"There are many that take people not to bargain, its just people being evil. And I don't know what else to look for." Perhaps it was his anger of the situation, but everything she was saying was just vomit, and it was frustrating him to no end. He moved away from her, out of reach, out of the comfort of a gesture of touch. He didn't need it, and he damn sure didn't want it. It was wrong, but for all intents and purposes she was the reason why Cassian was missing.

If her group was the ones who even took Cassian.

"Maybe if you both hadn't been keeping things to yourself, this wouldn't have happened. You, Cassian, Sibylla and everyone else working on trying to manage everyone and yet can't even manage yourselves. And nobody can see nothing in me, nothing at all. So stop trying to, I don't give a damn about me."

Elian wasn't sure what to do.

Gods he needed a drink.

 

[Shade]

Shade did not move when he pulled away, allowing the distance to remain as a necessary buffer for his frustration. She let his anger settle where it needed to without stepping in to soften the blow or challenge his accusations, showing no outward reaction to the sting of his words. There was no defense and no immediate correction; instead, she maintained a quiet stillness, absorbing his outburst while mentally separating the heat of his emotion from the facts buried beneath it.

For a long moment, she said nothing, her silence acting as a weight in the heavy Naboo air. Then, her gaze shifted away from him, returning to the ground to focus on something far smaller than the obvious disturbances or the sections cleared by the engineers. She moved past him with unhurried, deliberate steps, her attention fixed on a narrow strip of soil near the edge of the primary impact line where the earth had been disturbed and then not quite restored to its natural state.

As she crouched, her fingers brushed lightly across the dirt, her touch growing more precise as she traced the faintest impression left behind. It wasn't the kind of debris a scanner would flag, but rather a structural inconsistency where there should have been none.

"No," she said quietly, speaking more to the ground than to him. "This was not a random act of violence. They cleaned this site, but they weren't entirely thorough." Her fingers stilled along a shallow scoring line, a mark barely visible to the untrained eye. "This isn't damage from the crash; it's too controlled. They restrained him here."

The recognition in her voice was stark, devoid of speculation. Only then did she turn back to face Elian fully, meeting his gaze without pushing against the resentment written across his features.

"And no, Elian, I did not keep that attack a secret from you or anyone else," she added, her voice steady and grounded. She shifted her posture slightly, not out of defensiveness but to provide the clarity he lacked. "I spent significant time in the hospital and underwent weeks of physical therapy afterward. It was not hidden, and if the news of it never reached you, that was not my decision to make."

A quiet breath passed between them before she continued, her tone returning to its characteristic calm precision. "My enemies do not act without purpose, and they certainly do not take someone without a specific intent. If they are indeed responsible for this, then the evidence suggests he was alive when they moved him from this site."

She paused for a heartbeat, letting the conclusion settle as a cold, hard fact rather than a hollow comfort. "He still is alive. This is not where the trail ends; it is simply where it becomes more difficult to follow."

Elian Abrantes