First Reply Sparks and Screaming

[Fianna Halcyon]

They'd told her it was a simple job.

Couple of people had brought the droid into the shop. Man and a woman. Fee never could remember faces all that well. They'd both smiled and put down some cold, hard credits to get their droid repaired. Paid extra for the quick service. Paid extra-extra for the quiet service too.

At first, she hadn't thought much of the droid. It looked pretty old and worn. There was plenty of charm in old droids but sometimes, you hoped for something you could easily slot a generic part into. Fee spent the better half of the morning disassembling the chassis and getting the motivator board cleaned up. Replaced a few scorched wires. Reapplied some solder. It was turning into a typical fix for this tech whiz.

Until the point that Fee, with her hand still buried in the droid's electronic guts, felt the power core whir to life. The droid's eyes filled with light and stared at her. For a few awkward seconds, they locked in a weird embrace. Then it screamed, high-pitched binary piercing Fee's ears. It leaped off the table, dragging Fee with it. She scrambled, trying to keep herself upright as the droid frantically shoved through the door of the workshop and out onto the street. Arcs of oil spat and splattered across the ground and passing pedestrians as it screamed louder.

Fee smacked it with a hydrospanner as she tried desperately to wrench her poor, sore arm out from the middle of it.

"Stop screaming, I just fixed you!" she yelled.

 

[Mykel Dawson]

Clothing (Incognito)

Mykel weaved through the crowded street of the industrial district, eyes scanning the garish neon signs for any title of a used parts store. Puck hovered faithfully by his side, its large photoreceptor darting around in the socket as if it was searching with him.

On Corellia, one of the great shipwright worlds of the galaxy, there was no shortage of such sellers, the problem was finding a reputable seller offering parts at fair rates. He'd already gone through five sellers trying to offload crappy second hand phase couplers for just about the same price as an entire shielding assembly. With each encounter, it was becoming increasingly tempting for the Jedi to just handwave himself into being handed a replacement part. Currently the system now sat uncomfortably on the frontier of the Galactic Alliance, with the Galactic Empire mean mugging them across the border, and so people were scrambling to get out of dodge before the Imp war machine ever turned its malevolent gaze south. Such desperate conditions made for a gouger's paradise and a buyer's absolute nightmare.

It was just his luck that his uncle's freighter's hyperdrive had conked out now out of all times. Not even the technopath could fix the cracked coupler so now here he was in the trenches.

His grey eyes fell upon another potential storefront: Fisk Hyper Emporium.

"Maybe the sixth time was a charm?" he wished aloud to Puck, tone exasperated. "If not, then we might as well take our chances junkyard diving. I wish we could leave ratings on the holonet for all these scammers."

Just as he was about to enter the shop, he perked up to commotion up the street. The once crowded zone suddenly parted to either side amid screams and ranting, revealing a woman being violently corralled by a droid, while she was banging the absolute feth out of its chassis with a hydrospanner. She looked like her arm was lodged within somehow. All the while, jets of oil splattered everywhere from the roving droid, which is what had earned the ire of several pedestrians nearby.

"I guess Fisk can wait a little longer to bend me over."

Without a second thought, Mykel approached warring pair. A spray of oil came flying as he did, but then it seemed to just miss him, conveniently bending just around his head before hitting the pavement at his back.

"Hey, ma'am! Do you need help?" He called out, stepping in to obstruct the path of the wailing droid.

Fianna Halcyon

 

[Fianna Halcyon]

Fee's predicament was drawing some spectators. People in the middle of their shopping, stopping to watch and gawp. Served them right if they got splattered with oil.

Unfortunately, she was a little too busy trying to free herself to notice. Every time she tried to pull her arm out, it felt like some part of the droid's circuitry or chassis caught her, digging into her flesh, whilst it yanked and moved and wrestled itself in a different way. More than once, Fee gasped with pain as they moved different ways, sending her arm into unnatural twists that strained her muscles.

She became vaguely aware of someone approaching. Some guy that stood in the way of the droid. She couldn't really focus much, every chance she had to look, the droid would shove and move and drag her some other direction. He asked if she needed help. Fee nodded quickly, calling out.

"Yes! It's gone droid-mad!" she yelled out, boots skimming on the ground as it pulled her. The droid screamed more, reaching out with one of it's arms, fully heading straight into the stranger's personal space with some momentum, no intention of stopping or giving up.

Mykel Dawson