Star Wars Roleplay: Chaos

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Our Endless Numbered Days

"Li, if this is about that last order, it's really not a great time."

Aria sighed as she picked up her communicator, eyeing the viewing port cautiously. Multitasking was a straightforward enough endeavor. Flying, on the other hand, was not.

"Yeah, I'm really- really busy right now." Hitting a lever, she leant back comfortably. "Got a meeting- several meetings, actually, no break at all, in fact. Then I have dinner with this charming woman who wants to place a bulk order from Kova. It's wonderful, actually, great prospects, but it does mean I'm going to be really busy all day and probably won't be able to talk much. Or at all, as luck would have it. I know, I know it pains me more than it does you."

Pause.

"What? I am not lying. Why would I ever- was that a meteor?"

From her end, there was a moment of silence directly following the thud and crunch that came from her hull. It stretched out in suspense, and nervously, Aria glanced again at the screen feeding the view. Then the ship dropped suddenly, lurching as the stars shot upwards.

"Oh, this is wonderful. No- yes, of course I was lying, Li! I'm on a starship and it crashed because you were distracting me. Now I'm dying and it's all your fault-"

__________​
She woke up aching all over with a ringing in her ears. Amber eyes blinked, trying to focus the blurring around her vision. Bright... the sky. Unfamiliar planet. Oh, chit.

It took a few more moments to entangle herself from her thoughts and sit up, but eventually she forced herself to sit upright. Hugging her knees, she looked to the left at her mangled carcass of a ship then right at- oh. Another pair of eyes met hers. Stranger's eyes. Aria blinked, once, twice.
"Where am I?"
[member="Alm"]​
 
Manas
Rural Mountain Foothills

Several months after Alm had embarked on her very first intergalactic journey, she went home. Being a teenager, she was full of bold curiosity and willing to take risks but she wasn’t the best at timelineing. Still, she had learned a lot and started to soak up the modern ways of the more advanced sectors of the galaxy. She was excited to share these findings with her people who were wary of modernization and even warier of outsiders.

While they were glad to have her back, they were less enthused with her push to get them to adopt outside ways. Parts of Manas had advanced rapidly in the natural resource deficient desert, but Alm’s people thrived in the mountains and did not intend to change their ways. Frustrating to the young Nasvali? Of course—she loved her family but wanted to free them from the boons of a more basic lifestyle.

Nevertheless, she agreed to stay for a few days while her family tried fervently to get her to stay home. Alm had given them a soft no, unable to properly work up the courage to tell them outright that she planned to leave shortly—a shortcoming of hers, but she was young and afraid to offend the elders. Such would be a capital offense!

The people of the mountain were well aware that outside technology existed, and thus were used to seeing spacecraft fly over their land. Today, however, something unexpected had happened. A ship streaked from the sky at an alarming rate, accelerating at a dangerous angle to the ground. This freaked them out a little—outsiders were tolerated if necessary but not exactly welcome. Alm, being less world weary and still a little naive, had no problem taking the initiative to investigate the crash site.

And so it came that she would stumble upon one [member="Aria Vale"] in the smoldering wreckage. Alm approached cautiously so as to not startle the stranger and to protect herself should the crashee lash out—something in her subconscious told her to be wary—until she was a few steps away from Aria. The woman didn’t have any glaringly horrendous injuries from where she was standing which was good.

Suddenly she stirred and righted herself after a few laborious moments and rich amber eyes met honey brown.

Aria spoke, and Alm stared. There was an uncomfortably long pause between the two as Alm struggled to remember how to speak Basic, only using her native tongue over the last week.

“Here.”

She stated simply.

“Ground. On Manas.”

There. Perfect.
 
Aria blinked again, a look of intermingled bemusement and uncertainty woven across her features. There was another silence after Alm’s words—shorter—before the brunette sitting uncomfortable amidst the wreckage almost laughed, answering.

“Well, that clears things up.”

It did not clear things up.

Regardless, she looked more carefully at the taller woman- no. Taller (most were), but a fair bit younger than Aria. Huh. She wasn’t one to cross-analyse new faces, but her inquisitive nature lent itself to meeting strangers. Besides, as far as she could tell she’d crashed by a mountain in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t really much else to take notice of.

“Manas,” the Sith repeated, reaching into the confused thick mess around her mind and calling up more recent memories. She’d flown back to Maena via the Outer Rim- she would be somewhere there, surely. It would be her luck to crash somewhere so... remote. Still, it wouldn’t do her any good to jump to conclusions and worsen her mood.

(Tempting as it was.)

She shifted and wobbled, a curtain of dark hair briefly hiding her eyes.

“I.. crashed. Need to get home.” She didn’t have several meetings with no break at all, but what she did have was an otherwise busy schedule that she prefered to whatever she’d woken into. And it was growing steadily more obvious that autopilot was not, in fact, a suitable substitute for a real and able pilot.

“Ugh. I’m-“ she finally succeeded in standing up, glancing shakily at [member="Alm"], “could I ask your name?”

Had to start somewhere.
 
By now Alm had crouched so that she could be closer to Aria’s level and get a better assessment of the woman. Not that she or anyone in the mountains were particularly trained to handle crash victims with internal injuries (thankfully Aria seemed to have no severed limbs) but they did their best to treat ailments with local herbs and medicines they bartered for. Occasionally some very basic pain relievers would make their way from the city to the more rural areas.

“Manas.” She repeated in confirmation, slowly rising as the crash victim found her footing. The fact that she could stand was a good sign, probably. “Outer Rim.”

Alm listened closely, cocking her head to one side. “My name is Alm.” She declared with a bit of pride. It was one of the few proper Basic sentences she knew, likely from repetition. “You name?”

The Nasvali noted with slight envy, for a moment, how much more adult like this woman appeared than her. Though shorter, she looked more like a…woman, whereas Alm was all awkward gangly limbs and had yet to grow into her body. Such was the plight of a teenage girl.

Her head turned off into the distance toward the mountain rage. “Need to leave Manas, you going to Sel. Big city, many modern.” She waved her hand in the proper direction. “Travel, a small…a few days.” Unless Aria knew how to navigate the unfamiliar landscape, she’d need a guide. Can you say roadtrip?

The Nasvali turned back to face Aria, face set in stone and looking stern although she was not a particularly harsh person—that was just how Alm looked. “Tonight, staying with family here. Safe.”

[member="Aria Vale"]
 
Manas. Outer Rim. The latter, at least, checked out. The former was a new word to her, but the place itself felt unthreatening next to the towering cities of her day-to-day. If nothing else, Aria knew she could've ended up someplace far worse.

"Aria," she answered hesitantly. "Pleased to meet you, Alm."

Big city, many modern. It would be a start - Aria didn't place much hope in getting far from her current locale.

"Good," the Sith responded, with all the confidence of somebody who planned to leave at once, as though she knew where to go or how to get there or if she could travel at all with the handful of injuries she'd sustained.

There was at least some chance that Aria would have done just that if the brunette hadn't cautioned safety. The idea of staying where she was for tonight, safe or not, felt useless, resting where it was unnecessary - and Aria grew restless so easily. She moved where she had to - where there was knowledge to discover, strength to hone, ends to tie up - and then she kept going. Never stopped. Never let herself fall backwards.

But falling backwards felt inevitable if she insisted on pushing forwards when she didn't know how hurt she was. It was, by all accounts, the last of her reasons to wait out her recovery, but a reason was a reason.

"I’m sure I don’t need that long before I’m back on my feet,” she mused aloud, mind wary but largely unconcerned. “When you say it’s safe...how safe?”

[member="Alm"]​
 
“Please to meet you, Aria.” Alm parroted her words the best she could, accented thickly but still understandable. In the months she’d spent offworld, Alm became much more familiar with Basic than anyone in her tribe, which was good for Aria. Alm was also much more pleasant to offworlders.

The Nasvalo snorted. “More safer than here.” Her eyes swept down to Aria once more as if analyzing her further.

“I bring,” She announced, bending down to effortlessly scoop the injured woman up into her arms. “I carry to home.” By Alm’s judgement, it seemed like the right thing to do. Navigating her way through the wreckage and heading towards the mountain valley, she tried to keep the conversation flowing.

“Is good safe. Out, alone, dangerous beasts. With family, safety.” She paused, letting the sounds of night fall between them. The gentle thrum of insects and continuous flow of the nearby valley river were sounds that had lulled her to sleep since she was a child. “When better, where you go?”

[member="Aria Vale"]
 
"You don't need-"

She was cut off by surprise and then sheer bemusement as the Nasvalo scooped her up. Her first instinct was to protest (Aria wasn't the most arrogant among her kind, but certainly proud enough to take some level of objection) but the words disintegrated before she could voice them - she was injured and she didn't know how long a walk it was.

"Dangerous beasts," she repeated, somewhere between a statement and a question as though she had to wonder what sort of beasts could be lurking somewhere like this. Aria wasn't especially worried about any dangerous beasts, but the times where she was injured and in recovery were among those few times where she wasn't in the mood to fight monsters.

"Oh- home." Aria had to pause a moment before realising home wasn't much of an answer to a stranger. "To Maena. It's a- it's a city planet, lots of people, lots of lights. It's a nice place. For the most part."

The Sith lord was fond of traveling, of exploring and learning and discovering. But she would always like going home.

[member="Alm"]​
 

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