Private Temple of My Secrets

[Daiya]

::[THEME]::​

D E N O N
1600 TAUNGSDAY

She drew.

Her hands worked with unfamiliar tools, having to put down the colored pencil every time she needed a different hue. It was slower work, and the girl found herself frustrated with the results. More pressure was needed to get the same intensity of the colors, though too much would break the pencil tips forcing her to stop to do repairs. She didn't like the tedious need to go over and over her work to make it stand out the way it did in her mind, and even after all that it still didn't look right!

Daiya hurled a pencil against the wall. She should have felt satisfaction hearing the crack it made as the coloring utensil shattered into a dozen pieces, but only tears invaded her face.

It just wasn't the same. The colored pencils and flimsiplast she bought the other day made a poor substitute for a drawing medium. Daiya didn't want to look, but her eyes drew her to the datapad anyway. It sat across the room, lying on the table where she had been playing with it last night, trying against all hope to get it working again. Its screen, as shattered as the pencil the girl had thrown, no longer responded to her commands no matter what she tried, and she had the cuts on her finger to prove it. A sob bubbled up on her lips in despair at the wealth of art, and memories, she was losing to the datapad's disfunction.

Pushing aside the pad of bound flimsis that was laid out on her bed covers, Daiya bunched them up until all she could see was the ruffled sheets. Maybe the art materials were still there, buried where she couldn't see them, but at least now they no longer taunted her with their inadequacy. She sat on the edge of her bed for a moment before going over to her broken datapad. It felt heavy as the teen picked it up, as if the device was literally weighed down with the years and emotion she had fed to it. She pressed it to her chest and wrapped her arms around it, grieving its loss as much as she would a friend's.

After a while, the teen started to feel silly. It was tech, not a being, and on a world like Denon there had to be someone capable of repairing it. Someone she could trust with the innermost secrets and visions she had imparted to the device she used as her holojournal. With a renewed vigor, she planted her feet on the floor and stood up, resolving to do something about it all.

Daiya found the woman at the Second Chance in the Upcity. It was supposed to be a classier venue, or at least it purported to be by virtue of its location, though the teen wasn't buying the attempt. A fixer bar attracted all sorts of gutter trash, spacers, and shadowrunners. The classiest thing about it might have been the way it operated without fear of reprisal, making it a viable intermediary between the Corpo elites and the underclasses.

She wasn't here to meet a Corpo. Far from it, Daiya was here because it was the one place she could count on finding Yula Perl. She didn't want to go tracking the Zeltron woman all about the city or risk running into her cop-boyfriend again. The teen needed Yula alone, or at least as alone as they could be in public. It's not like Daiya was really worried about being overheard in the noisy venue.

And since she needed the technomancer and confidant both, the young shadowrunner had little choice but to seek out someone like Yula.

"Hey!" Daiya looked cheery now, standing where Yula could notice her. When she had the woman's attention, and hopefully a clear zone within earshot, she stepped close. Now her hands came together and fidgeted a little as she spoke. "You remember that time we tried to fix that shockboxing match? And it got kinda rough? Well..."

The teen pulled out the datapad from her satchel, showing the woman its damaged casing and shattered screen. She tried so hard to keep her face from flooding again, but even still Daiya had to stop to take a thready breath before she could go on. "I've tried everything I can think of to make it work again. It barely turns on, and when it does, it won't let me do anything. I just..." She was clearly distraught, though her eyes stayed miraculously dry for now. "I have everything in here. Please, I need your help, I can't lose it all!"

Yula Perl​

 

[Yula Perl]

“Mmf-“

Yula was mid-sip into a sugary cocktail some dirtbag had bought her in hopes of getting lucky. While she had no intention of actually taking things anywhere, she didn’t turn down free booze.

Pulling away from the glass, she flicked her wrist in a dismissive motion.

“I’ll catch up with you sometime.” A lie. “Ta-ta.”

He balked. “What do you-“

“Ta-TA.”

She shooed him off the couch and patted the empty spot for Daiya. Sinking further into the cushions, she appraised the datapad on her lap.

“Woof.” Yula turned the device over with a scrunched face. “Sorry kid, but I don’t think-“

Her single eye lifted at that exact time to catch the expression on Daiya’s face. This wasn’t just some busted comm, was it?

“Alright, let’s see what we can do.” Shifting upright with a groan, the cocktail glass was placed to the side, two hands now on the datapad. With how her boyfriend has botched the operation that lead to this, helping Daiya was the least she could do.

“The pad itself is shot to chit. Would cost more to repair the screen and bindings, replace the processor…huh, yeah. Our best bet is to try and salvage your HD, then transfer your data into a new one.”

She glanced to the teen to gauge how her assessment had landed.

“How’d you find me, anyway?”

Daiya

 

[Daiya]

The cushions eased the burden that felt lighter anyway after Yula gave her agreement. Daiya sat down, feeling the warm fabric conform to her like a comforting embrace. It didn't make the teen happy, though it at least settled much of the anxiety she had walked in with. With a calmer eye, Daiya followed Yula's hands as she worked over the datapad.

"You can do that?" The young shadowrunner was incredulous. Last time, her datapad had been blasted to bits and she had to start everything over. That was exactly what she didn't want to have happen this time, transferring everything over could make it like the damage had never happened. "That would be a-mazing!"

She scooted to the edge of the couch now, perched on the precipice of life itself. With Yula as her savior for the moment, Daiya felt on top of the world. It was a far cry from the downtrodden little girl she had felt like lately, sometimes it was as if there was no one in the galaxy who cared about her. And then the teen reached out to a friend like Yula again, and suddenly she was invincible!

Daiya knew it had been a smart move to make friends with Yula from the very first time she'd laid eyes on her. It was hard to deny the imposing nature of the Zeltron woman's talent and charisma, it carved ahead of Yula like a glowrod in the dark. Even though the woman took work all over the galaxy, Daiya thought she worked best as a shadowrunner.

Then again, she was bit biased.

"Oh, that was easy," Daiya chirped when Yula asked how she was found. The teen giggled in the afterglow, wondering if the woman was truly ignorant of the many ways she could be tracked. "It's not like a slipped a tracer in your drink...though that would make it easier."

She giggled again, Daiya's bubbly personality on display once more. "No, I just asked around at the Blue Flame, and someone mentioned that you'd done a job for Stinis lately. He wasn't there, but Shenn —he's the owner, he knows everyone who comes in— got Stinis on comms who told me that Blanchard set up your meet. Well, she owns this place, so I figured it was a good start for finding you...and here you are!"

Daiya grinned at her own ingenuity, even if some of the charm seemed flat after she revealed the secret. She didn't mind telling Yula, though. It was strangely reassurring to be around her, as if the teen could get drunk and wild in the woman's presence without any worries at all.

"So how do we start?" Daiya asked, shifting the focus back to her datapad. She was less anxious, more eager, to get it functional again. "Do you want credits, or can I buy you a drink? This doesn't have to be a straight favor."

Yula Perl​

 

[Yula Perl]

Yula's lips pursed together, eyebrows raising to reflect her mild surprise and…appreciation.

"I'm impressed, kid." She admitted while poking at the busted device's side buttons. "Blanchard, huh? She owns that dive a few blocks over too. The one uhh, down near Stim Row." Hooking a finger beneath the hair tie around her wrist, Yula pull it free and set to work tying her long hair back. "Didn't know she owned this place too. Either I'm easy to find or you're good."

She met Daiya's grin with one of her own.

"Remind me not to piss you off, yeah?"

Bubbly and perky as Daiya was, she knew how to use those disarming traits to her advantage. Youth was always underestimated, even on a world like Denon where kids grew up smart, or they didn't grow up at all.

Smoothing back the dark waves from her temple, Yula set the datapad on the table in front of her.

"You can start by ordering me a Tatooine Dream." The surgery, hard-hitting cocktail would be her brainfood.

Reaching into her coat pocket, she retrieved a small plastoid square and placed it on the table next to the datapad.

"I'll pull the data onto here, then we'll transfer it into a new datapad. If you don't have one, we can go shopping!"

Once the appointed cocktail was in hand and sipped from, Yula rubbed her palms together and set to work. Two fingers pressed against the back surface of the datapad, sliding along the device's casing slowly. They stopped eventually, coming to rest over one spot. After roughly a minute of careful concentration, Yula spoke again.

"Feel it? The datapad is warm. That means it's either working or about to explode."

Daiya

 

[Daiya]

"You're good. Remind me not to piss you off, yeah?"

The words buoyed the girl as she danced away, letting her arms spin around her freely during the short jaunt to the bar counter. The woman's recognition sent her heart bouncing, the young shadowrunner even found herself cackling under her breath at the implication the words held. Notoriety was a valuable thing on Denon, almost as important as who to know. When Daiya placed her order at the bar, the girl found that the barkeep grew much more eager to help after mentioning that it was for Yula. From Daiya's own experience, that either meant the Zeltron was a regular, or she was someone best kept happy and well-appeased.

If someone with that kind of repute was giving her praise, Daiya knew it was valuable.

"You know, I think you're the one not to piss off around here," Daiya said as she sat down, passing the drink over to the woman. It was hard not to be impressed, and maybe a little intimidated, being in Yula's presence. The teen liked the feeling, as odd as it was. Not the comforting presence of Shenn Rosham , or the relaxing warmth around Brie Jaxx , but an electric tingling that set her on edge. She felt excited, and that was a thrilling sensation to bask in.

Yula worked fast, and the young shadowrunner found that she had trouble following it all. The cable seemed right, but the woman's hands moved over her datapad with some kind of magic. She watched as a panel popped open under Yula's ministrations, revealing the guts of the device much more gently than the time Daiya had carelessly dropped it. Then it had been a harrowing ordeal, this time the teen felt at ease watching her datapad come apart.

She felt the back of it at Yula's urging, and nodded soberly. "Please don't let it explode Yula." Thank the stars, her eyes stayed dry this time. Daiya still had to swallow back her emotions again, but she was able to keep her voice light. "Not until after you get all the data off, anyway."

Daiya forced a grin again, and then felt it grow genuine. Somehow she wasn't as worried about it anymore. Only a few minutes ago, her world had been ending, now she felt confident that Yula could make it keep turning. One thing into another, her data salvaged into a new device, a mournful elegy into a joyful refrain.

She could almost hear the music.

The girl paused, not quite understanding where this new revelation had come from. It wasn't a vision exactly, she hadn't Seen anything. It was more of...a feeling. And one that drove her, not to tears, but to elation.

Daiya had a good feeling about this. That pulled her bubbly demeanor back to the surface, pouring out a gleeful question, "So once you get it transferred, shopping trip?!"

She paused again. "No. Transfer, then we make it explode, and then the shopping trip!"

Yula Perl​

 

[Yula Perl]

"Mmm," Yula took a grateful sip of the drink, the sugar quickly quelling a craving she'd had all morning. Accordingly, she raised her glass to the bartender in a signal of approval.

"Yeah, we c—explode??" She chortled suddenly, hand nearly shifting away from the datapad as she shook with brief laughter. Her fingers were almost magnetized to the device, using the Force to encourage connections that had otherwise been severed during the fall. This one wasn't too tricky to figure out, the components within just needed a bit of guidance under Yula's temporary fix. Slowly, her fingers slid from the datapad to the cable, dancing along the durasteel fiber coating. "I can do this without the cord, you know. Riskier that way."

She was afraid of a full-blown crying Daiya. Not that she didn't know what to expect, but growing up in the Perl abode meant that she'd had her lifetime's share of teenage girl tantrums.

"Almost done…" Pink digits shifted over the drive, shepherding all of Daiya's files onto the external device. It took a few minutes, seeing as how she'd taken the safest, yet slowest route.

"…there!" She announced triumphantly, disconnecting the cable from the ruined datapad and into the port on her own. A new drive icon popped up in her control panel, and she expanded it so that Daiya could see. "Lookit, right there—there's your stuff."

She grinned widely.

"Wanna blow it up?"

Daiya

 

[Daiya]

As Yula lifted her glass to the bartender, the teen once again wondered if she shouldn't have gotten her own. She loved the feeling it gave her, the fuzzy rush that left her without much care over what happened, so long as something was happening. That had been fuel for many a night of sheer enjoyment, and certainly helped Daiya when she needed to dampen the rawness of her emotions.

Today Daiya didn't want to dampen them. She wanted to feel every single one as they came in, the bad with the good. The datapad was more than just a device to her, it was as close to a part of her soul as anything could get. Every single moment counted here.

Daiya rode on the high of this moment, watching with fascination as Yula declared her ability to do the work without tools. Now the girl was interested. The Zeltron's pink hands danced across the device, and the girl was shocked that she could feel something happening. Not a feeling inside her, it was something entirely under the command of Yula and her magic fingers.

"How do you do that?" The teen asked, almost breathlessly. It surprised even her, not only to voice the question but to mean it, too. Daiya barely paid much attention to mechanical problems or others who had tried to explain the workings of technology to her. She knew enough to break down a blaster, crack a lock, cut off power, or disable some of the simpler security systems she came across. Most of the other work, actual engineering or slicing, that was beyond even her interest. But whatever the woman before her was doing, it fascinated the girl and she had no idea why.

She only knew that, whatever Yula was doing, she could actually feel it working.

And then it was gone, with the plug of a cable Yula started the transfer in earnest. Daiya could mostly follow this part, her mind was still trying to process what she had seen before. What she had felt. "Is it...always like that? When you fix something, I mean? Because, it felt like..."

The teen bit her lip, almost not willing to say it. She had already confessed her abilities to Yula before, of course. A moment that had been so fraught with terror and stress, Daiya hardly knew what she was doing. The realization had hit her at the same time she spoke, trotting out that awful term she hated associating herself with. The Force. It sounded more like some youngling's imaginary explanation for the chit the world threw at everyone than the reason she was cursed with powers she didn't want.

"...the Force." It was barely a whisper on her breath this time. Daiya could hardly bring herself to say it, to even acknowledge it was to give life to that unholy truth. She had to say it this time, the teen knew she couldn't avoid it forever.

But then Yula was loudly declaring a triumph, and Daiya couldn't help but grin again. She had already forgotten the sense of dread from a moment ago, and with any luck the Zeltron hadn't caught her admission this time. The teen's heart soared as she leaned in eagerly to see the icon on the woman's own datapad. One little design that encapsulated the whole of her life. It felt silly to think of it that day, and the teen burst out into a tumble of giggles.

"You're a-mazing, Yula!" Her grin reached nearly to the ends of the booth, and Daiya found herself wrapping her arms around the Zeltron woman in a short, but tight, squeeze. She sprung apart, picking up the old datapad that was merely a shell now, and grinned up at Yula again. "You're, like, my favorite person in the whole galaxy right now, you know that?"

Daiya didn't know what could make this moment better until Yula agreed that they could blow up the old datapad. The teen squealed a bit, finally gaining enough control over herself to utter a straight response. "Feth, yeah!"

"I know just the place here, come on!" The girl pulled at Yula's hands, taking the lead this time. She had been here only a few times before, but Daiya had already learned that the workshop in the alley was a better spot for chaos than in the middle of the crowded bar. She had no intention of getting herself banned from the place, even if it would have been fun to shake things up just once. Urging the Zeltron woman to stand, Daiya guided her quarry, making a beeline straight for the alley and the freedom of the space out there.

Once outside, in an unused corner of the garage workshop, Daiya set the datapad down and took a step back and turned to Yula, assuming her wayward tech savior had followed. "Got any explosives, or..."

The teen glanced over at the big reel of electrical wire that hung from the ceiling, ready to provide enough juice to spark a speeder engine to life. And plenty to fry a datapad enough to make sparks. She waited to see if Yula had any better methods.

Yula Perl​

 

[Yula Perl]

Yula hadn't heard Daiya's murmur, the whispered words fading into the chatter of the crowd. Perhaps she wouldn't have heard them if they were a bit louder either—so caught up she was in her triumph and ensuring that the data had migrated successfully, the admission would have escaped her notice.

Even if she had heard them, it wouldn't have made much of a difference. The concept of the Force was no grand mystery to Yula. It had been a part of her life from a young age; her mother had been a Jedi, and her sisters were as sensitive as she. While they'd all fanned out into the galaxy for their own training, intentional or not, Joza had instilled within them the very basics of control and manipulation.

It was necessary when Force Tantrum was a real thing.

"Yo—woa!" Yula stumbled behind Daiya for a few steps, finding her footing behind the girl as she was led out of the bar and down an alley. They slowed to a trot through the threshold of an open garage, one that had clearly seen heavy use over the past few years. "Yeah, I've got a few on me." Yula patted the outside of her jacket pocket before absently picking up a spanner, turning it over to inspect. "Buuuut you're not gonna use them. Not today, at least."

Leaning against a work surface, Yula braced her hands on the surface behind her as she appraised Daiya. "You know how I did what I did back there? That's called technopathy. It's what happens when you manipulate technology with The Force. You get good enough at it, you can do all sorts of things—boost engines, reprogram droids, slice security systems, and move data around. But the best way to start learning is to blow chit up." She cleared her throat. "In my humble opinion, at least."

There was a method to her madness, but it was still madness.

Daiya

 

[Daiya]

Daiya giggled as the woman stumbled to keep up, nearly bringing her to the point of an eye roll. Yula was a smooth operator, hot as feth, and not one to cross in a fight, but the teen couldn't help but be amused by how easily one drink could waylay the Zeltron badass. The teen grinned with Yula's easy recovery, grateful for the one time that she wasn't the one tripping over herself.

With confirmation of the explosive route, the teen looked nearly giddy. She stepped up towards Yula, holding out her hand to receive one, but found herself gifted the spanner instead. Confusion ruled her gaze as she looked up at the woman, who was once again demonstrating how to be the Queen of Smooth.

"Oh," the teen said, looking down at her hands. She turned over the spanner a few times, trying it this way and that. It felt out of place in hands that were much more comfortable wielding a blaster or a knife. "Of course you used the Force."

Technopathy. She turned the word over in her mouth a few times. She gave Yula a cursory grin when the woman mentioned that the best way to learn was to blow chit up. With that, Daiya could agree. The unfamiliar word tumbled over her tongue and her thoughts, distracting them from the confession she really didn't want to give again.

It had been easier with Brie. Daiya had been drunker, too, but the scrapper girl was her best friend in the whole galaxy. She put the spanner down on the work bench to clear her hands, as if the physical motion could lend space to her desperate mind. When nothing changed, the teen swallowed back the fear that had bubbled back up to the surface again. She took in a breath. This was Yula, who had already been impressed with Daiya once tonight.

She felt like chit to let her down.

"That's gonna be a problem. For me, I mean..." The young shadowrunner explained. Chit, why hadn't Daiya just used her blaster on the old datapad herself? She should have known this was a bad idea, getting help from someone she admired. Getting close to someone again. The teen had enough bad experiences with that to have known better. Sober and alert, she couldn't blame anyone but herself for getting into this technopathy mess now, and Yula deserved to know the truth.

"Look, I know I have the Force...magic...chit, whatever it is. But I'm not like you," she confessed. There, the truth. The teen gave the woman a plaintive look, as if waiting for permission to stop. As if begging to be spared the whole, bitter truth made into words again. "I'm not...I'm not some Force Wizard who can just snap their hands and —POOF!— magic! I'm...cursed."

The word fell with tears on her cheeks, and the teen sniffed. Feth it, she really wanted a drink now. It wasn't fair that she had to suffer these emotions raw, feel them crawling over her, ripping at her. She couldn't keep them away from her at the worst of times, but now she was conjuring them up freely? Daiya wiped at her cheeks, blinking her eyes clear again.

"All I get are these visions. Whether I want to or not, I can't control them." Her words tumbled out now, a storm of honesty that Daiya couldn't control anymore. "Just like I can't control the other chit that happens, like at the shockboxing match. Using the Force to just grab stuff?"

The teen held her hand out at the spanner again, willing it to jump across the space between them and into her hands. She thrust her hand toward it again, adding her second with no change in effect. Daiya spread them back towards Yula, "See? I'm not like you, I'm just..."

Cursed.

Daiya hoped Yula didn't say it either. It was bad enough to suffer it, naming it was worse. Her blue eyes dared to glance into the dark gaze above, afraid of what she might see. Expecting the worst, though no worse than she had suffered before. Like all the rest, she feared this was the moment when Yula would leave the girl to her own devices.

After so many times before, should it really still hurt?

Yula Perl​

 

[Yula Perl]

Yula's eyes followed Daiya's reach as the teen extended a hand towards the spanner. Unlike at the shockboxing match, the tool didn't leap into her open palm. Not even a wiggle.

This hadn't been the first time Yula encountered a skeptic of The Force. She'd been fortunate enough that the mysterious power had never been all that mysterious—from a head-on perspective, that was. Her abilities were detected early, as were her siblings, but they hadn't been whisked off to temples and trained as monks. They were simply treated as children, instructed in the very basics of control by their mother to avoid Force-imbued temper tantrums at the dinner table. The Force had never been a way of life, but it had certainly been a part of life.

It certainly wasn't scary. Until you thought about all of the darker applications the Force had, or witnessed a true Master flex the upper limits of their capabilities. Calling a spanner with the wave of a hand was something she'd done without thinking a hundred times over, but for Daiya it seemed to exist on another plane entirely.

"Most people aren't very good at it, you know." Crossing her arms over her chest, Yula shrugged. "At first, I mean. I'm lucky—my ma used to be a Jedi, so she sensed it early in us, I guess. Didn't exactly teach us how to use it, but just enough so that we wouldn't demolish the house down to the foundation." Despite the mood, one corner of her mouth lifted at the fond memory of nearly Force-screaming a wall down when Kyra had eaten the last of the Yoda-Os.

"Hell, it took me years to just…not blow something up when I tried to fix it." Yula held both hands out now, spreading one palm to each side. "No one, unless you're real good, is gonna be an expert at this kind of thing without practice. An' you don't need to be a Jedi or Sith or whatever to do it, though plenty of folks out there would disagree."

"Aint nothin' wrong with you, Daiya. If you're up for it, I can show you what I know and you can decide for yourself if it's something you wanna do."

Daiya

 

[Daiya]

Her casual pose, her simple shrug, her modest words.

Daiya stared at Yula, having expected the worst. She was a Shadowrunner, the streets of Denon were unkind to weakness of any sort. She thought Yula would understand that, from what the teen saw, Yula lived that. It puzzled Daiya to find the woman offering sympathy and encouragement instead.

"You act like it's not a big deal, what the feth?" Daiya started in, her cheeks hot. The blood in her veins simmered, coloring her cheeks and itching in her limbs. "It's supposed to be a big deal. Everyone with the Force walks through here like they've got it all made, like Denon is just some pit stop for them. Like I belong here, the cursed girl in with the gangsters and desperate Shadowrunners, we're the misfits of the galaxy. And why not? We wouldn't be here unless we didn't have anything better."

She clasped and unclasped her hands, suddenly sweaty. Daiya's feet stepped a few paces one way, then paced back the other, keeping in front of the woman. "Like why are you here? You have the Force and your boyfriend can get you off for any crimes, so why Denon? Is this practice or just play?" Her cheeks grew ruddy with guilt, yet it didn't stop the young shadowrunner's rant. "You've got like everything I'd ever want, so why don't you leave? Get offworld, far away from this chithole of a planet?!"

The teen stuffed her hands in her pockets, her shoulders slumping as she paced in silence for a moment. Her tongue had more ground to cover still, and that was part of the problem. Daiya scuffed the floor as she realized everything that was pouring out of her at the wrong target.

"I don't even know why I'm mad, Yula," the teen admitted, glancing over at the woman. She had expected more at this point, for Yula to hit her or walk away, or at least to yell back. Daiya just had a soapbox instead, and she was starting to hate it. "Chit, this is so embarrassing. I didn't mean all that, I'm just not used to someone being so understanding, yaknow?"

Somehow, Daiya suspected Yula might just know. It wasn't just an inkling or a thought, more like a tickle in the back of her mind. The teen squirmed at it, fighting the unnatural feeling that was welling up again. Just as it had when Yula was diagnosing her datapad, or when Daiya was trying to concentrate in the middle of a firefight.

Or just before a Vision.

"Feth!" She cursed under her breath. Her hands came out, itching for that spanner again. The teen felt a need to throw something, or shoot something, or...to blow up the datapad.

She whirled back to face the broken device, lying where she left it on the garage floor. Daiya stuck out a hand experimentally, feeling nothing but her own irritation and uneasiness in the moment. The teen had never done this on purpose before, it felt wrong to even try.

Daiya looked over at Yula, who still seemed to be waiting for the teen to decide. "Okay, how do I do this Force chit?"

Yula Perl​

 

[Yula Perl]

"Its-" Whatever she wanted to say died in her throat the moment she focused on Daiya's reddened face and clenched fists. For a hot second, Yula was confused. It must have shown, because the girl quickly (and aggressively) elaborated, leaving a stunned Zeltron staring in bewilderment. She'd never borne witness to Daiya's temper, nor Daiya to hers.

"Listen here you little chit!" She surged forward, curling her fist into the front of Daiya's shirt and yanking the teenager upward. "Don't care if you didn't mean it, you said it and I had to listen to it." Something told her that yeah, Daiya did mean at least part of it. What burned the most was that there was a certain level of truth to her words.

She could get off world, if she wanted. Suck back up to mom for credits. Or go live with Dagon on his Jedi ship or whatever, she had the laser sword and decent enough control over the Force. The family name, a safety net if she really came into desperate measures. Connections forged in different sectors, a skillset that might be able to get her a steady job with fair wages at a decent company, instead of working for herself. None of that appealed to her, her interests were elsewhere. But that was the difference between her and Daiya; Yula had a choice. Daiya didn't.

With that thought she dropped her hold on the girl's collar, but adrenaline still kept her muscles tight and her posture aggressive. How would Dagon Kaze deal with this? Being a teacher of the Force wasn't in her wheelhouse, so she didn't know what to do when it came to...reactions like this.

"I'm here because I hate bullies." She snapped, ignoring how after-school-special cheesy that sounded. "I hate the big guys whose only way to get big is to keep on crushin' the little guys—that goes for corpos, government, whatever." She chewed her lip while watching Daiya attempt to pull the invisible tether between herself and the broken datapad. "Dating a cop aint nearly as pretty as it sounds." She snorted wryly. "You know how much grief I get for doing what I do? Not easy to hide your plans from an investigator as stubborn as that."

"Goes to show you can't choose who you fall for." Muttering to herself—but loud enough to be heard among the heated silence of the warehouse—Yula pushed away from the table and paced over to Daiya. "Chill, yeah?" A hand pressed against the girl's shoulder without caution, partially expecting to be swatted away. "We'll get to the exploding, just tell me what you mean about being cursed?"

That part was concerning.

Daiya

 

[Daiya]

Daiya let out a squeal of protest as her feet left the ground, hauled up by the pink grip of Yula. Her shirt caught under her chin, tipping the girl's head back so she could barely spy the Zeltron woman above freckled cheeks. Crimson words fell hot over her ears, showcasing a side of Yula that she hadn't seen yet.

It was a side the teen might have admired in another moment.

She brought her hands to grip Yula's, struggling to break the woman's grip. If anyone had done this to her before, she had been too small or scared to fight back. Or protected by the presence of her Wookiee partner. Now there was no one to intervene for her, and Daiya was forced to rely on her own devices. Dextrous hands more nimble than strong plied futilely at the Zeltron's strong grip. How much did Yula work out?

Before Daiya had to resort to stronger measures, her feet touched the ground again. She gazed up at Yula, the fire rekindled in her eyes now. The teen opened her mouth, petulance and quips ready to lash back at Yula. The woman was quick to trample her tongue's opportunity, launching into an explanation that might have sounded trite coming from anyone else.

It still didn't exactly convince the teen that Yula understood even half of it.

"Yeah, we're chill," she mustered up a grumble. Glancing down at herself, Daiya picked at her stretched collar, exposing more of her bony sternum than she liked. The teen shrugged, "You owe me a new shirt, but yeah, we're chill."

She thought that would be the end of it. Daiya felt ready to move on, even if Yula was done with her now. The young shadowrunner wouldn't have blamed the woman, that same chilly connection was status quo among Darkwire and the Duskers who lived in Denon's band of eternal twilight. More so alliances of convenience and common enemies than real camaraderie. If Yula just wanted to be that, Daiya would find real help somewhere else.

This wasn't the end.

"Oh, now you want to know about being cursed..." Daiya's first reaction was incredulity. The teen muttered, more to herself than anyone else. "I get it now, flex first, ask questions later..."

A sigh flowed over the growing lump in her throat. Daiya wondered if she should have even told Yula in the first place, these kinds of questions were exactly why she didn't. "What more can I tell you? Everywhere I go, I get these Visions of things that could happen. That usually will happen unless I do something about them. Like, when I was eight and I couldn't stop dreaming of Kel'i Dinn's stupid, untied shoelaces until she finally tripped and broke her nose!"

Her mouth turned down in a scowl, and she scuffed her foot on the garage floor. It stopped just short of the datapad. Daiya was tempted to do it again, to watch the corrupted shell of her memories skitter away across the duracrete floor. "They got worse after that. And it's not just dreams now, they just come whenever they want. Especially if I'm in the middle of doing something fun...or trying not to get my head shot off."

Daiya couldn't help the growl of frustration from inflecting her voice, her hands clenching again while he feet stayed rigid. Her tone rose a few notes, pushing for a convincing melody, even if the teen was still uncertain why she was confessing it all, "Look, if I had my datapad working, I could show. I try to draw them, get them out of my head, y'know? If I don't, if I don't try to fix it, they'll just come back, and I..."

Her head dipped, and she let her hair fall around her face. It was a comfort where she felt none, dry eyes belying the trauma that shook her slender shoulders now. Daiya was grateful for Yula's hand on her shoulder now, even if she'd never tell. "I can't keep Seeing all that death."

Yula Perl​

 

[Yula Perl]

Yula clicked her tongue, squinting at Daiya while the girl fumbled her way through an explanation. She could feel the heat in her own cheeks plain now—some of it from her outburst in anger, and a trickle of embarrassment that her temper had gotten the better of her. That, and her own declaration of justice surprised even herself…who was she, Dagon? Yula's moral compass had developed in the Outer Rim, where camaraderie wasn't an outlier when you shared a common goal.

Denon was colder.

"I can't keep Seeing all that death."

Daiya's explanation delved into something deeper than she'd imagined, a few cuts above Yula's pay grade where the Force was concerned. She actually wished that Dagon was here, in this grimy warehouse, to help Daiya make sense of things with the right words. Yula had only experienced a smattering of Force visions, the most poignant on Ilum among the crystal caves. Split-second premonitions were more common with her, so routinely envisioning death was…an unsettling idea. Yula frowned. The poor kid had to go through all this alone, treated like she was cursed.

Daiya's aversion to the Force made a little more sense now.

"That…sucks."

She exhaled sharply, sucking on the inside of her cheek. Her hand squeezed Daiya's shoulder out of an instinct to comfort. "I didn't know you drew. I'd like to see them, if you want to show me."

A thousand questions rolled through her head, but Daiya had balked at just one—she didn't want to push the girl any further. Not today, at least.

"You sure you wanna use the Force to fuck up your datapad? Not your foot?" Aside from Daiya's mistrust of the esoteric power, she was wary of an untrained Force-sensitive using anger as a conduit for technopathy. Something something dark side, right? Dagon would never let her hear the end of it if she somehow turned a Shadowrunner into a Sith.

Daiya

 

[Daiya]

"Yeah..." The quiet word dropped from her lips, leaving behind a pool of gratification inside her. The teen had waited years, kilometers, thousands of conversations to hear the words she needed for herself. Yula wasn't trying to fix her, or cheer her up, or even question her anymore. Now the woman was offering the one thing Daiya needed the most.

Validation.

It sucked, and that was all Daiya ever wanted anyone to know. She didn't want this curse, whether its cause was the Force or not, but she had it. It sucked. She hated the Visions, hated herself for continuing to See them. She hated closing her eyes at night, not knowing what lurked inside her dreams. She hated that feeling of pressure behind her forehead, the way that reality warped into possibility. It sucked.

Still, the girl couldn't bring herself to hate drawing it all out. Her stomach would get tingly, replacing the dread bit by bit as the images moved from her mind to the page. She grasped her hand just thinking about it, her fingers itching to re-enact it. Daiya could use that kind of catharsis right about now.

She looked up at the pink woman's face when Yula squeezed her shoulder, the teen's eyes searching it for a hint of deceit. Daiya found none, and for a moment she was confused. She took a breath and let it out, and clarity replaced confusion, the feeling of warmth returning to her body after so long in the cold.

Daiya managed a little smile at Yula, "If you really mean that, I could show you..." Her head gave a slow incline back toward the datapad. "Once I get a new one of those."

The teen wanted to laugh, to dance, maybe even to sing!

She hid it as best she could, trepidation guarding her actions. It gave the Zeltron a moment to steer the subject back on course, and Daiya was grateful for it. The teen could barely trust her own feelings today, and Yula had nearly seen the gamut of them already.

So of course, the woman was just as guarded. Daiya could hear the caution in Yula's voice, that slow tone adults used when they wanted her to rethink her choices. As if Daiya hadn't thought and rethought it all in the last five minutes already. She gave the pink woman a coy grin, stamping down the rest of her caution and fears. Daiya refused to listen to those anymore today.

"Yula, if you don't show me what you promised, the techno-whatever-y, I'm gonna use your head!" She giggled at her own threat, talking quickly to avoid dwelling on any of it.

"You keep hyping up all the Force chit, but we keep just talking about it." Daiya noted, her voice turning no-nonsense as her face tried to mimic it. The teen managed a series of quick nods, as serious as she could get. "I'm about to scream."

Yula Perl​

 

[Yula Perl]

Thank Ashla, the tone had shifted. Teenager mood swings were not her specialty, oddly so given how well versed she was in her own.

"Alright, alriiiight already!" She mirrored Daiya's grin, her energy infectious. "Don't scream though. If you use the Force to scream you'll take out this entire block." And Yula would get one hell of a lecture.

Waving Daiya over to the defunct datapad, she gestured to the device. "Gotta warn you, I've never been a teacher before. If this block goes up, I'm running." She snickered. "Now put your hands on the datapad—both of em. And just…I guess, focus? If that makes sense. Actually—you know what, put them here, over the battery." Pursing her lips, the Zeltron made a small adjustment. She'd discovered her own affinity for technopathy while tinkering at home, inadvertently causing electrical fires. It stood to reason that Daiya could make one if she actually tried, right?

"This'll sound dumb, but try to feel the battery. There' still some juice left in it. Just get in there and..feth that juice up. Make it your bith."

Yula scratched at her head awkwardly. She'd never actually described the process of technopathy before, to her it was more of a feeling. But God, did it sound absolutely stupid.

Daiya

 

[Daiya]

A nefarious grin tugged back one side of her lips, the warm pleasure of satisfaction spreading throughout her body. There was no way Daiya would have given up so easily, not after she saw how slick Yula's hands had taken to the device. Curse or no, most technology had a tendency to utterly stump the teen, she wasn't going to pass up her only chance to win the upper hand.

"Wait, I can do that?" The notion of the Force Scream sparked new opportunities in her head. Something to use again the next time she had to face up against an out-of-control ginger. Cartri Keswoll certainly wouldn't have cared if the rest of his apartment got taken out that day. Daiya pressed her lips together, "Okay, okay, I won't do it. I promise. But that's fething astral, I just gotta say it. Just from screaming..."

Daiya turned her attention to the lesson the Zeltron woman offered her. She understood the words being spoken, just not how they were being used. Moving her hands and focusing, that was it?

"Umm, okay..." Daiya tried it. Setting her hand on the warm case of the datapad, the teen really tried. She thought about the datapad, until Yula interrupted her again.

She moved her hands to the visible battery instead, covering it from sight. She thought about it again. "It's just a battery. What am I supposed to think about?"

Feel the battery?

"Uhhh," the teen started, giggling at Yula's demand. Daiya had other ways of making it her bith, this one felt silly. She thought about it, closing her eyes and furrowing her brow. A familiar pulsing behind her eyes awoke, sending tendrils of pain through her head, and she shut it out.

Daiya's eyes flew open, and she took a shaky breath. Eyes open this time.

"You sure there's nothing else? No magic words to say? Just feel it?" Daiya rolled her eyes, turning her attention back to the datapad. She willed her eyes to stay open, her imagination much weaker in the background now. Her thoughts focused on the datapad, but still the girl didn't know what she was supposed to think about.

"I mean, it's a datapad. It's yea big, weighs just enough, and I use it for everything." Daiya began to narrate, uncertain of what else to do. "It's got a stylus, that's a thing, it works a-mazing for drawing. And it fits in a pocket on a pair of pants I have —those are some a-mazing pants. They're a little scuffed up, and there's a rip, but I sewed a patch that looks like a cat on there. And..."

She shook her head. Right, the datapad.

"This isn't working, Yula." Daiya pulled her hand back and threw it at the device again, hoping to replicate her success from the other day. "Go. Do the thing. Make a boom!"

Yula Perl​

 

[Yula Perl]

Yula watched Daiya with nervous anticipation, her own hands pressed together with fingertips digging into her chin. She's never been a teacher before—not where the mysticism of The Force had been concerned. She'd never thought about how to explain it, how to teach it before. If Dagon were here, he'd at least be able to provide some more appropriate counseling. Certainly, a trained Jedi Knight would make a better guide than a fringe gearhead.

What if she did something wrong and Daiya turned into a Sith and she got in big trouble?

"You just— it's like—" The cogs in her mind were spinning in circles, then finally she closed the gap between herself and Daiya. Producing a sonic screwdriver from her belt, Yula went to work on the outer screws and removed the datapad's casing. Now with the inner guts exposed, she guided Daiya's hand to the bare battery. This was…significantly more dangerous, but maybe removing the device's protective layer would help Daiya sense what she couldn't put her finger on.

The Zeltron shuffled in place for a few moments, then poked Daiya's bare arm with her finger. A minuscule arc of static electricity zipped between them.

"Try to find that in the battery. Don't worry about blowing anything up yet—just focus on the feeling."

Don't blow things up. Focus on… man, I'm turning into Dag.

Daiya

 

[Daiya]

(Post Soundtrack: "Show Yourself" cover by 12DAL)

Daiya could feel the frustration rising in her voice, a residual sentiment from her earlier mood swing. Or maybe just the result of her failure to make the Force cooperate as easily as Yula said it would. Feel the battery, like it was just that fething easy!

The teen could feel herself breathing hard, every fragment of her body focused on the device in her sight. A seething intensity that made her heart pound in her ears, and her fingers itch with the urge to act. After all the build up and the guiding words from Yula, she had made exactly nothing happen. And at this point, Daiya wasn't happy to just leave her curse alone.

She was ready to blow it up, right along with the datapad.

Daiya jumped, startled by the woman's hand touching hers. Yula was close again, guiding her palm over to the newly-exposed guts of the datapad. The wiring and circuitry looked foreign to her, even if it was recognizable enough from damaging enough equipment or watching others repair it. The teen let her hand be placed on a large block inside the device, almost too hot to touch. She knew instantly this was what made the datapad so warm. This was the battery.

Inside the battery, she was supposed to find juice. To feel the juice, according to Yula there was still some residual energy inside it. To the young shadowrunner's fingers, it just felt hot. Just hot.

"Ow!" Daiya yelped as Yula shocked her, sending all the hairs on her arm straight up. Her head whipped back at the woman, directing a demanding, "HEY!" in the Zeltron's direction. But Yula was already explaining, alluding to the jolt Daiya had just received.

Find that?

Turning her simmering eyes back onto the datapad took effort, even if the shocking audacity of the woman made her want to laugh instead. It made more sense now what Yula meant by juice in the battery, and Daiya felt a little dumb for not realizing it. It was the same kind of thing she had motioned to earlier, the huge electrical cables above their heads, meant for powering speeders or other experiments in the garage. Juice, electricity, power. The young shadowrunner knew that could make things blow up, but not like she knew now.

"Okay, lemme try again." The teen breathed a little easier now, knowing what she was looking for. Her body relaxed, releasing the tension she'd carried in her shoulders and brow. She just had to find the juice, that spark of current like the one that had shocked her a moment ago. Easy.

Right?

The throbbing behind her eyes was back, demanding attention just when Daiya wanted her own focus. She willed her thoughts toward the presence under her fingers instead, shifting their weight on the device underneath. In a moment, the teen promised herself, in just another moment she could blow through her curse. She could blow up a datapad, scream to blow up a block, and maybe even control when a vision came again.

Her forehead throbbed again, louder this time. Daiya pressed her other hand to her skull, forcing it back. Not the time! she told it, as if her curse would listen. It must know what she was doing, it must be trying to stop her. Her brow furrowed again as the girl fought against two natures, two desires, two feelings that she wished she could reverse. The curse demanded, the juice resisted, she only needed to flip that around.

"Feth!" Her voice resounded in anguish, her eyes closed against the impending force, and her head exploded in blinding pain.

An eternity passed.

Her eyes saw only darkness, only the theatre of phosphenes performing for her mind's eye.

No Vision came this time, no taunting future inflicted itself upon her mind. Her world was darkness but for the tips of her fingers.

It surged through them. Heat, but behind it lingered energy. Potential. Power.

"Oh!" she gasped, her eyes fluttering open. Everything looked the same to her, even after she blinked to test it. She moved her hand from her head until it loomed in her vision, turning it a few times just to be certain. Reassured that she was still here, Daiya laughed, stopping herself after just a moment.

Her head still hurt, less than before, but it still forced acknowledgement in between her laughter. A whimper, and then another laugh.

She took a few breaths experimentally, finally letting it out in a shuddering flow of relief. The girl turned to Yula, a grin growing over the fading pain etched on her face. "I got it! I mean, I think so."

Daiya glanced back down at the battery, pulling her hand away. She bit her lip, then touched her hand to its bare form again. There was no zap as when Yula had shocked her, but heat flowed into her fingertips once more and with them came a feeling as well. Not touch or taste, not temperature or emotion or anything like she had ever known. A sense of something...more.

"Yeah. It's there, Yula. The juice, the Force, whatever it is in there, I got it." Daiya beamed at the woman, not caring if she looked or sounded a bit foolish right now. The teen could be naked or singing off-key for all she cared in the moment. "It's fething weird, Yula! I can't describe it..."

Daiya would have loved nothing better than to scream for joy right now, only stopping herself for a reluctance to blow up this particular block of the city.

"It's like, umm, uhh, prize credits? That's not right, but it's like that? You don't know they exist until you hear about the contest, and then it's like they're just calling to you, y'know? Like they should be yours, they deserve to be yours, and just think of everything you can do with them! It's like that, but it's not, but it is."

That didn't make any sense, but Daiya couldn't figure out a better way to explain it. She giggled deliriously, unable to keep it bottled up inside. Yula had to understand, this was her Force chit after all!

 

[Yula Perl]

Daiya's face scrunched in not only concentration but, pain—and Yula had to stop herself from doing something about it.

Not that she knew what to do. Should she shake Daiya's shoulder, break her concentration and snap her out of this? The teen would certainly bite her heard off, but that wasn't the deterrent here. Through Daiya's flurry of emotion, she wanted this. Wanted to make sense of things, to be able to just…do it.

Neither of them had been able to put any of this into eloquent words, but it didn't matter. From where she was standing only a few feet away, Yula felt the Force surge across the datapad. Just a little. Just enough!

When Daiya opened her eyes, she'd find the Zeltron beaming at her, brimming with energy like the battery itself. She bounced on her toes, excitement growing as Daiya tried to describe the sensation. The girl wasn't chitting her—she wasn't the type—and her thrill was infectious.

"Yes!" Yula slammed a fist against the work table with unbridled enthusiasm. "That's it! That's the feeling, Daiya!" Where Yula's words had failed, Daiya's filled in the gaps. The power, the potential…experiencing it for the first time was something that could not be felt again. "Oh man, this is just awesome. You're awesome—or, what's that thing you say…a-mazing? You're a-mazing, Daiya!"

Yula inhaled sharply, holding her breath for a few seconds before letting out a steady exhale. "Alright, alright. Take your time and get used to it. When you're ready, make those credits multiply."

Daiya