One Last Stop

[Curtis Learchin]

He'd been travelling for what felt like weeks.

In reality, it hadn't been that long since he'd left [member="Loreena Arenais"]' side, and now he was on his way back to her. They had decided to meet up on some backwater that escaped Curtis' memory, but he'd need to refuel to get there. That was why he was on Bespin in the first place. The planet was known for its fuel mining, and what better place to restock than there. It also had the added bonus of being out of any factions control.

His ship was docked at one of the refueling pads that dotted the planet's upper atmosphere, though being a gas giant, it wasn't as if he could go any further down. The ship was being refueled as he milled about the station, wasting time. The clerk watched him with beady eyes, a common feature of Rodians.

"How much is that going to cost me?" Curtis asked politely. He wasn't as wealthy as he hoped, working for the Sith Empire wasn't a well paying job. The Rodian passed him a datapad, and Curtis had to stop himself from throwing it in anger. "20,000 credits to refuel?!? What kind of operation is this?!?" He could feel the anger coming to the surface. Maybe he'd indulge a bit.

But little did he know that he was not alone.

[member="Amilthi Camlenn"]

 

[Amilthi Camlenn]

The longevity of Amilthi's trusty little starfighter was much improved by the fact that she knew how to stay out of a fight. In the time that the somewhat battered ship had been in her possession, she had fired its laser cannons exactly once, and at this point she wasn't even entirely certain that they still worked. The stealth suite did, and that was the main thing. There were plenty of weapons engineers on Bespin, which was only natural given the resource mined here, but Amilthi couldn't have afforded their services anyway. Nor did she feel a strong need to get out of the cockpit - she could escape from her physical body into the bliss of the pure mind all too easily. Her reason for being here was quite simple and pedestrian: she needed fuel to continue her journey.

So, too, did other people, such as the young man who was currently yelling at a clerk. He clearly did not know how to do business in the Outer Rim. His was not the fake outrage that often accompanied the beginning of a negotiation, but genuine, and impotent anger.

Amilthi went up to the pair of them. "Please leave this man alive", she said lightly, with a calm, friendly smile. "I will need him to sell me some fuel." It seemed almost improbably that, dressed as she was, she would even have the money for it. Her attire, a simple, grey-blue skirt, a washed-out rosé top, and a roomy grey coat with a hood, all of coarse fabric, was such that it would befit any of the poorest of the galaxy.

[member="Curtis Learchin"]​

 

[Curtis Learchin]

The calm voice from behind him made Curtis turn quickly, almost reaching for his lightsaber. But when he saw that it was just another customer, his hand moved away. He had to remember that he wasn't in Sith space, acts of violence couldn't just be used whenever he wanted to.

"Fine" He stated, before looking back to the salesman. "I'll give you 15,000. Take it or leave it." After a few moments, the Rodian nodded, and Curtis exchanged the credits. If he had wanted to, he could've used the force to get the fuel for free, but with the woman there as well, it wasn't the best circumstances. As the clerk walked away to oversee the rest of the refuelling, Curtis turned his attention back to the woman.

"Lucky for him you were here" Curtis said with a growl, the anger still flowing through him. It had been a while since he'd given into it, and it didn't seem like today would be that day either.

[member="Amilthi Camlenn"]

 

[Amilthi Camlenn]

It was clear that the rodian was, despite Amilthi’s presence, eager to get rid of the customer, and took the first opportunity when [member="Curtis Learchin"] named a price that was still quite advantageous for the seller.

It was a rushed retreat from both sides, and the young man was still left with an anger that he didn’t quite know what to do with and that caused him stress and suffering. Perhaps he had done a wise thing by depriving himself of a potential target for it as quickly as possible.

”Anger is such a pointless reaction to a naturally occurring phenomenon“, she remarked with an encouraging smile that took away much of the disagreeableness of such unsolicited comment. ”Do you meet the rain with anger? Or gravity? No, you don’t - and you see that it is madness.”

”To expect to be quoted a reasonable price for any item in the Outer Rim is akin to expecting a planet not to exert gravitational pull. No matter what you do, it will not happen. Instead, you learn to fly a ship and plot a course that will not have you crash into the surface. And you learn to haggle for an acceptable price without being so disagreeable.”

There was something simultaneously mischievous and gently teasing, and very non-confrontational and forgiving about Amilthi’s expression. She seemed completely unaffected by her interlocutor’s state of mind on a deep instinctual level in a way that was positively unnatural for a woman, and one of her social station at that.

 

[Curtis Learchin]

When the woman started preaching, Curtis couldn't help but listen. Despite him not agreeing, there was wisdom in her words, becoming angry at her or the clerk was pointless. That was how this area of the galaxy worked, even if he hated it.

"Anger at being ripped off is natural" He replied, pacing back and forth slowly as he waited. All he wanted was fuel so that he could get back to Lori, and even that was a struggle. His journey thus far had been filled with diversions. He'd been recruited to a rebellion, shot down in Silver space, and now he was being lectured by a woman. There was something different about her though, a calmness not achieved by many.

"Where are you heading?" His question was more to fill the silent void rather than genuine curiosity, but he would be on Bespin for a while, so small talk would at least help pass the time. Besides, there was something about the woman that interested him. He wanted to learn more.

[member="Amilthi Camlenn"]

 

[Amilthi Camlenn]

"If you do only what you find natural, you are no more than an animal. I think you have quite a bit more in you", said Amilthi with a quizzical smile. "Don't you think?" These last words were again spoken in such a naively encouraging tone that it might have been difficult to take offence at them.

Amilthi threw and idle glance around at the busy spaceport. "<Hey!>" she called out in perfect Huttese to the the rodian - "<When you're done with this one, come over here!>" She nodded vaguely in the direction of her starfighter, but figured in the worst case he would just come to her personally.

"Animals tend to get eaten by bigger animals", she remarked, turning her head over her shoulder to Curtis. "You can try to become the biggest, most ferocious of them all, but" - she gave an unconcerned shrug - "you will probably fail. As a wise Jedi master is reputed to have once said: there's always a bigger fish." Again there was an element of mischief in this ridiculous quote.

"Eriadu, for now", she finally answered his question, once again throwing a brief glance at her ship, to then return her full attention to the young man.

[member="Curtis Learchin"]​

 

[Curtis Learchin]

Curtis' eyes followed the woman closely, watching as she continued to lecture him. The way she moved and spoke, it was almost akin to a Jedi. Maybe she was one, but he didn't need to bring attention to himself too much if she was. Even out here, his background wouldn't be well received. Last thing he needed was a bounty hunter overhearing and trying to chase him down for some quick credits. As far as he knew, there was still a bounty on Sith.

"The food chain is meant to be climbed, that is why I hunted back home." His reference to his former homeworld was more to open the conversation up more. Not many people went to Dathomir willingly, and the natives knew better than most the folly of trying to be the biggest fish. But Curtis had always been different to his clanmates, perhaps because he was not born to them, but brought by unloving parents.

His gaze shifted from [member="Amilthi Camlenn"] to her ship, a small but comfortable looking starfighter, better looking than his battered Star Courier. He'd need a refit soon, or a new ship entirely.

"Nice ship, where'd you get it?"

 

[Amilthi Camlenn]

"On Svivren, a while ago. I ran into it quite by accident and liked it, and the dealer was almost about to scrap it. It looked worse then, I've had some friends have a look in the meantime", said Amilthi conversationally.

"But no, you don't want to climb the food chain. Because it gets you eaten. And in the unlikely event that it doesn't, you'll still have to constantly worry about the bigger fish to avoid it. You want to exit it. That's what being sentient is all for."

"Look at you", she said, smiling again. "You're here now, not at home where you used to hunt. If you were a mere animal, you couldn't have done that. Where was it?"

[member="Curtis Learchin"]​

 

[Curtis Learchin]

"Dathomir" Curtis replied bluntly, still looking at the starfighter. During their chat, he'd been trying to reach out with the force, to identify if she wielded it at the very least. But he couldn't get a good grip of it. It had been a while since he'd used it, but surely he couldn't be that rusty? Shrugging it off, he turned back to [member="Amilthi Camlenn"], looking her up and down once more.

"You seem to say a lot for a random traveller on an Outer Rim planet" He stated, taking a step forward. "Usually people aren't so keen to offer advice" His suspicions of her had only grown since she had begun preaching, and his theory as to her Jedi background was only getting stronger. But without revealing his own nature, it would be a waiting game to find out the answer.

 

[Amilthi Camlenn]

Amilthi chuckled amicably. "Oh, haven't you noticed? Old people are always keen to offer advice to their juniors." It was perhaps an odd joke to make for a woman who looked only a decade Curtis' senior.

"Besides, I don't like to see people suffering when I can help it."

The rodian, having finally put in motion the process he had been working on and handed it off to the dock workers, scurried towards her ship and waved her over.

"Excuse me", Amilthi turned to Curtis with a polite smile, and walked over.

What followed was a lively exchange in Huttese, a language in which Amilthi's voice sounded harder, but she never raised it. Her hands, too, simply remained folded in front of her - as she stood before the much more animated rodian, her features changing only between a smile and neutrality, she seemed to be resting in an oddly immovable state, as if nothing could have pushed her from her position, physically or metaphorically.

After a few minutes, hands were shaken, which she showed no hesitation to do with the rodian, and a deal had been sealed. The man waved over an assistant who was carrying a fuel hose.

[member="Curtis Learchin"]​

 

[Curtis Learchin]

The calmness of [member="Amilthi Camlenn"] as she dealt with the rodian was nothing short of surprising. Rodians had always been a difficult species, but she handled him with ease, as if he were just a leaf in the wind. Once her business was concluded, Curtis approached.

"So you give out advice, speak alien languages, and fly a retrofitted starfighter. Anything else I should know about you?" She had gained his attention, though out here, that wasn't too difficult. Her remark about age was interesting, he hadn't thought she was that much older than him. But in a way it made sense, her opinions must've been formed over several years.

His gaze trailed back to his ship for a moment, it's hull battered and bruised. Maybe he'd ask for a fixup after all...

 

[Amilthi Camlenn]

"Alien languages? Half the Outer Rim speaks Huttese", laughed Amilthi. "Perhaps that's why I pay about half of what you do per gallon. Or it's the fact that I don't try to eat people, so they don't try to eat me." There was again that quizzical expression in her features, but soon it dissolved.

Indeed, the rodian had been rather grateful for her prior intervention, which had certainly facilitated the negotiation. She examined the young man before her. She was aware he must be rather confused by her demeanour, and something about that fact delighted her. The strangest things happened when one put people off balance. Such as obtaining cheap fuel on Bespin, but much stranger things than that, too.

It was no surprise that he found it difficult to conduct himself here in the southern Outer Rim. Dathomir was indeed a planet of hunters and hunted, a brutal, violent ecosystem, and a culture to go with it. Which wasn't to say that it was necessarily violent, but it had a rather simplistic mentality that must have left the lad thoroughly unprepared for the colourful mess that was the Outer Rim - in many ways harsher than the human tribes of Dathomir, but at the same time slyer.

"Dathomir is far from here", she remarked. "And something tells me you're not on your way back home to your mother's hearth. What brought you out here?"

[member="Curtis Learchin"]​

 

[Curtis Learchin]

"A meeting" Curtis replied bluntly, not wishing to go deeper into his reasoning's for being out here. "And right now, I'm trying to get back to someone important" He let that slip rather easily, but he didn't mind too much. The Agents of Chaos were a threat to some people, but he doubted that Lori was. Even so, he'd avoid using her name if he could, he still didn't know this woman after all.

His gaze drifted slightly to the sea of clouds that lay before the refueling platform, and he could tell why people flocked here. It was beautiful in its own way, even if the people were scum and snakes. Turning back to [member="Amilthi Camlenn"], he refocused himself on the woman who lectured and questioned him.

"What about you? Why come all the way here?" It was his turn to ask a question.

 

[Amilthi Camlenn]

"'Come all the way out here'? I didn't learn to speak Huttese in the Core", retorted Amilthi with a wry smile. "Besides, do I look like I just came from Coruscant?" It was clear enough from her accent that she had to have grown up on a Core world, but she did not seem to intend to explain at this point when and why she had come to live in the Outer Rim.

"Where is your sweetheart waiting? Don't look at me like that" - Amilthi chuckled - "nobody speaks of 'getting back to someone important' in any other context."

"By the way, don't leave your ship out of your eyes. Not, anyway, if you mind people rummaging through your underwear", she remarked casually, pointing at a pair of feet that was just disappearing through the hatch of Curtis' ship - and whose owner, most likely a mechanic, whose intrusion may or may not have been authorised, she had most definitely not had her eyes on even a moment ago.

Curtis Learchin​

 

[Curtis Learchin]

Curtis' eyes darted over to his ship, just catching the feet of the boarder as they disappeared through the hatch.

"For the love of..." He muttered, as he started towards his ship. Getting to the hatch, he saw the worker welding something back into place, a welding mask across their face to protect them from the sparks. Satisfied with what the inturder was doing, Curtis moved back to Amilthi Camlenn , a small smile on his face.

"Her name is Lori if you must know..." He answered with after a slight pause. "Don't look at me like that, she's important to me and I'm in a hurry. What's so wrong about that?"

 

[Amilthi Camlenn]

Something was off about this man. He exemplified a lot of what was wrong with young humanoids, the brashness, the unwarranted confidence, and Amilthi didn't like the way in which she felt he thought about his 'sweetheart'. There was an entitled possessiveness to it. But beyond these common failings, there was more, an unusual, savage intensity of emotion. Usually, unkind beings of lesser sophistication were a bit dull, muted inside. Not this one. There was a kind of fire in him even if he was trying to hide it now.

Amilthi noticed the way in which he was immediately challenging her, like an animal that felt threatened, demanding that she justify whatever attitude he had perceived her to have with respect to his romantic entanglement. "What would happen if she died?" she asked nonchalantly. Who knew in what world she lived in which that wasn't a strange conversational move.

Curtis Learchin

 

[Curtis Learchin]

The question caught Curtis off-guard, he'd never been asked such a thing before. It bordered on a threat, but her tone indicated it was just more probing. What she was hoping to find was another matter.

"If she died..." He could feel his body tensing, one hand clenching into a fist, the anger from before rearing its head again. "I would hunt down anyone who harmed her" Curtis replied after a moment, the anger still coursing through him. The urge to lash out was strong, he felt almost like an animal who had been caged.

"And what would you do? If the person you cared for died?" He snapped a second later. Her question had made him react more violently then he could've predicted, and that was a problem.

Amilthi Camlenn

 

[Amilthi Camlenn]

"It's curious that someone harming her is your first thought. What about an accident or disease?" remarked Amilthi, ignoring his question. "Who is she that someone would harm her? Or who are you?" she asked, her head tilted slightly.

Curtis Learchin

 

[Curtis Learchin]

"I..." Curtis stopped himself quickly, his anger turning to slight fear at her new line of questioning. As far as he knew, no one outside of the Sith Empire knew his origins, not even Lori. And now this woman had somehow found out more in an hour than anyone else had. Something about her made him drop his defences, though he sensed no ill intents from her. Her asking of Lori's potential death was strange enough to peak his interest more than his worry.

"Her name is Loreena, mine is Curtis" He replied, not wishing to give her too much information at that moment. He knew that he wasn't in any danger, that the women was not going to harm him, but he had always been cautious of people. "And who are you? To ask so many questions?"

Amilthi Camlenn