Turn Up

[Kaili Talith]

What had made her move in this direction? Kaili held the rusted toy in her hands and gave it a contemplative twist. Most people looked at the surface of Orma and shook their head at the idea of anyone ever going there, yet all around Kaili there was an ecosystem of scavengers who all sifted through the ancient junkyard looking for treasure. The saying that one man’s trash was another’s treasure came to mind, but Kaili had never thought herself to be the adherent of such a thing. Yet here she was, picking through a trash pile that spanned a whole world. Sure, she needed a gas mask, environmental suit and sturdy gloves for it, but something about it just sort of spoke to her. This wasn’t the first time she was up to this either. She had been to a few places just like this, but never a scrapheap that spanned a whole world.

Gently discarding the broken toy by her side she rose up to throw a quick glance around the immediate area. Acid rain clouds lingered on the horizon but didn’t seem to be moving any closer for the time being. Her head bobbed up and down in a small nod for herself. It was a good thing, the idea of cowering in yet another makeshift shelter for an indeterminate amount of time did not strike her as particularly enjoyable and at the end of the day she had better things to do than sit around on her ass waiting for time to pass. Like finding old droids, for example. The idea had come at her in the refresher actually, and she had decided to act upon it simply because, well, she had those resources. To repair old droids was a good way to rediscover old forgotten history from many years ago while instilling little to no effort on Kaili’s and, as once again, she had those resources at hand.

For the last few hours she had been trying to focus herself on the nearby mechanical signatures that she could sense in the force. There was one that stood out to her, begging for mercy in the midst of a particularly big pile of droid parts. But that was just it. They were droid parts. They all spoke to her, and she needed to single out what was perhaps best referred to as a single needle in a haystack. All of the droid parts wanted to find their respective partners again, and in some cases Kaili had even taken to making sure that happened, but for now she needed to find her motherlode.

A sigh resonated through the audio port of her mask as she walked down the canyon of scrap. It was somewhere around here, she just had to find it first.

[member="Gabriel Lethe"]

 

[Thaddeus Wyse]

[member="Kaili Talith"]

It was quite the peaceful scene that Kaili moved herself through.

In an ideal situation that would be it. She would continue to explore, salvage, maybe find some kind of special piece of equipment that was exceedingly rare in the Galaxy and learn something about the value of a good old fashion scrapyard world. Sadly... Gabriel Lethe was on the planet as well at that exact moment and if there was one thing that anyone ever learned when Lethe was involved?

Nothing was ever ideal.

It was the explosion that would tip her off that something was wrong.

Not too close from her location, maybe about a five minute walk, if they went about it in a single line. But it was a 30 second rush, if you were using a jetpack... which Gabriel was.

"Feth, feth, feth, FETH." Murmuring softly between his teeth as he sped away from the slowly rising hulk behind him. Who would have taught that pushing the red button wasn't a good idea?? A roar behind him sounded as the gargantuan droid climbed out of the droid-shaped hole, pieces of ancient scrap falling from him hills at a time.

"Keep it together, Gabey, we doing fine. It's fiiiiiiine."

He sped past Kaili.

Then froze in the air.

Then shifted back again, staring at her for a moment, then at the droid roaring in the distance. It was already, slowly, making its approach and it would probably be a few minutes before it got here. "...Kay, right? You fixed my gear on a beach. Fancy seeing you her- okay, look, we can talk later.... I think we should run now, yes?"

 

[Kaili Talith]

[member="Gabriel Lethe"]

Yet another sigh oscillated out of her mask. Her toes kicked against a small piece of metal on the ground as she cursed under her breath. How hard could it be to find a working droid on a world full of dead ones, really? Well, as it turned out, pretty freaking hard. The woman knelt down by a small discarded datapad. It always amused her how these devices were no longer designed for longevity as much as to keep the consumers coming back for more. Gloved thumb brushed at the manufacturer’s logo, and sure enough it was from the Atrisian tech powerhouse that Kaili had suspected it was from. Eyes closed to focus on what was wrong with the device, and to her great surprise it would actually try to spark to life as she held the power button down for a while.

“Huh.” The girl snickered to herself and reached for the pouch hanging over her shoulder. That’s where she kept her spare batteries after all. Her fingers wrapped around a big cylinder-shaped piece. “Now, let’s-” Kaili was going to bring the battery closer to the device and try to hotwire the device with the force but an explosion tore her attention in a hurry. “What the-” The battery was deposited back into the pouch along with the pad. Something came over the hill with a vengeance while chasing…

“Woah!” Kaili nearly lost her balance at the man’s pull. Wait, how did he know her name? What was going on? Wait a minute. “Blonde music guy!” Kaili blinked as she was torn away from the coming monster by her wrist. “It’s uh- It’s... Strange to see you here.”

“What the heck are you dragging me into here?”

 

[Thaddeus Wyse]

[member="Kaili Talith"]

Blonde music guy???

Gaaaabrieeeeeeeeel, I said biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit- not the time for that right now, Gabey. Not the time.

"Dragging you in? I am dragging you out, lover. Less chit-chat, more run-run!" Every so often the lad would sneak a look over his shoulder to the huge droid rampaging behind them. It was taking its time- huge servomotors gearing up and down, every step it took was flattening debris and hills, it was insane. It made him wonder why he even decided to sign up for this job anyway.

Well, you didn't know there was a huge, maniacal killing bot out here.

That was true.

But that didn't really help him right now. In fact, it was most definitely only assisting him in freaking out more. At least he could have been prepared to be almost eaten by a huge metal mouth otherwise.

Once again Gabe tried to pull her with.

 

[Kaili Talith]

[member="Gabriel Lethe"]

Lover?! Kaili fought the temptation to wring the man’s arm. She had one lover, and she was- right, it wasn’t to say that Kaili was his lover as much as a petname. Okay, she knew that. Now, at least. The man urged her to talk less and run more and truth told she didn’t see anything wrong with that plan. She wasn’t afraid of the big droid as much as the overall tone the man was setting for it. Hostility obviously reeked from the mechanical beast, but Kaili had nothing to fear in an artificial construct.

“Whatever you want to call it!” She shouted from behind his back as he pulled her along. “What is that thing?!”

She tried to identify the make, but from the look of it the beast didn’t have just a single make as much as several very big ones. It reeked of jury-rigging, of retrofitted parts that had to been made to comply with one another against their will. The shrieks it made in the force began to make it all the more obvious that this creature really did not enjoy life in the state it was in, and truth told Kaili felt bad for it.

“We have to kill it.” Kaili said and wrestled her wrist out of Gabe’s grip. “It wants to die!”

Her feet skipped from one garbage pile to the other. “It would be-” She grunted with a jump. “The right thing to do.”

 

[Thaddeus Wyse]

[member="Kaili Talith"]

"It's a huge metal killer bot trying to crush us under its feet, that's what it is!" Gabriel shouted back as he pulled her along. It wasn't easy- but it was even less easy for Kaili who didn't have the addition of a jump-pack to make each jump just a little bit more comfortable with vertical thrust at the right moment. Stolen, of course. But when you take up a contract to take out a few BlasTech warehouses, there wasn't really any other option available to you, but to take a few things here and there while you were at it.

Or so Gabriel rationalized it anyway.

After all, they gonna be destroyed anyway, right?

Besides BlasTech was huge in comparison to the little guy and they used their weight to push people around. Huge corporations could go down as far as Gabey was concerned. "Wait- wot." He froze in place just as Kaili wrenched her arm free from his grip.

"Are you- what- woman, do you see that monstrosity? We are like gorram ants with little toothpicks compared to that. What do you wanna do, yell at it loudly for it to sit down in a corner??" The look Gabey gave her sold the entire deal. He literally thought she was insane- maybe the vapor of the planet had somehow gotten through her air-filters and left her less than stable in the moment. Maybe someone had hit her over the head somewhere between their first meeting and their current one?

He eyed her head for a moment, trying to see if there were any obvious bumps there.

In the meantime in the distance the thump, thump, thump of the killer-bot grew louder.

 

[Kaili Talith]

[member="Gabriel Lethe"]

“To eat a rancor your cut it up into smaller pieces!” Kaili defended her idea as she grabbed Gabe by the wrist and proceeded to pull him along. “That thing is built of droids, many, many droids, and we can easily disassemble them by being clever.”

Running down the alley Kaili didn’t bother much with looking over her shoulder. By the shakes in the ground and the shrieks and roars in the air it was pretty obvious that the thing was still on their tail like a bad taco. Letting go of Gabe she slid under a small obstacle and stopped on the other end to look at the beast, brows furrowing in pity.

“Look at it. It wants to die, it’s in pain.” She shook her head and turned around again to continue running. “We just need something really big to hit it with.”

“Like a snowspeeder or a military transport, but good luck finding that!” Kaili continued running. “Why are you even here?! What did you do to make it so damn angry?”

 

[Thaddeus Wyse]

[member="Kaili Talith"]

"Clever?" Gabriel allowed himself to be pulled along this time around, but couldn't help and look back over his shoulder towards that monstrosity. "We'd need a gorram Fondorian Orchestral Choir to tackle that thing."

They stopped, looked, ran, stopped, a couple times in a row and every time Gabe just wasn't sure if they were seeing the same thing here. He didn't see some kind of poor beast crying its eyes out and wanting to be put down. No, that metal thing that was causing the lands to shake with its steps were something entirely else. Every time it placed its foot, something was squashed.

Every time its foot rose, it left a crater the size of a light freighter.

"Woah now! Hey, hey. I didn't do anything!" Gabriel shouted back as they restarted their running matters. "I was just scavenging, found this neat little thing and suddenly the wreckage I was in started shaking like crazy."

Well, there was more to the story than that, but that didn't really matter.

Neither did the fact that once Gabriel pulled it out of his pocket, it started humming a bit against his skin. It was a fist-sized sphere, blue lights coming from the inside, whirring here and there.

"Power source, I think? Maybe?"

 

[Kaili Talith]

[member="Gabriel Lethe"]

“A what?” Kaili looked surprised for a moment at the man wanting to bring an orchestra into this. Nonetheless she shook the feeling and continued running, and perhaps she couldn’t blame him for the lack of insight he had into the beast's movements but it seemed pretty clear to Kaili that the thing was in pain. The shakes in the ground made it hard to find even footing and by the time they came to a stop Kaili had to put her arms out to think of a plan. Gabe brought his pouch out and showed her a glowing ball. A power source, awesome.

Kaili grabbed the sphere without saying much of anything and proceeded to try and overload it. The electrical sparks seeping out of it were absorbed at her fingertips and the power just seemed to amplify in strength over time until Kaili motion for Gabe to back off.

“We can use this,” She grunted and paused in order to not lose her focus. To do that would be, well, fatal. “To bomb it.”

And by the sparks and arcs straying from its surface Gabe would probably know better than to get too close. Kaili tossed the ball in the air, gave it a push with the force until it landed at the giant’s feet. The hiss it spread across the field grew louder and more tense. Kaili prepared herself for the thing to blow, only…

Crackle, pop, whizzz…

It never happened. She looked at the impromptu bomb in horror and then turned around for Gabe’s hand again. “Okay that didn’t work, RUN!”

The monster’s roar grew louder than ever.

“I think we might have just killed one of it’s children.” Kaili chuckled rather awkwardly under her breath as she tore Gabe along the path ahead. “It’s uh, probably a good idea to keep running, blonde-o. Like, right now, and really fast.” The giant tore at a nearby freighter in pure rage and a piece of the hull was torn right from it. “You were right. RUN!”

 

[Thaddeus Wyse]

[member="Kaili Talith"]

"Wait wha-"

She already had the sphere in her hands and the look Kaili gave him told him that there wasn't any use in fighting it.

That was... until she threw his payday away and it sizzled. No explosion, tho. "You- That- That was my payday!" Gabey shouted and once more it was him preventing them from making a run for it. He was sputtering and trying to figure out how he would exactly explain this to his employers. Feth. He'd probably have to go away for a few weeks to a few months. But the tugging grew more insistent and just as the lad was about to bite a what?! his eyes widened.

That freighter was bigger than-

He ran.

Raaaaaaaaaaaaan.

Boosters of his boots and jetpack helping him along, while pulling Kaili with him. Just in time too, because the freighter exploded as it hit the ground where they had been a few moments ago. The heat of the wave threw them further into the air and by some miracle they didn't die. Instead they were send skidding across metal, before the momentum of the crash made them... drop. Down a hole and then down, down, down, just in time for the huge monstrosity to ram its foot where they had been a moment ago.

Not that Gabriel had the luxury of realizing this.

He was too busy screaming, while holding onto Kaili for his dear life.

 

[Kaili Talith]

[member="Gabriel Lethe"]

“That was a child! I did you a favor!” Kay shouted back as the two began to soar away from the hulking, truly enraged behemoth of scrap. The ship that the scrapheap had thrown at them exploded and the heat brushed against Kaili, yet she remained somewhat unfazed. The blast threw them into a slide and a ride for their life. Somewhere in the middle there, Kaili shifted into focus as her feet struggled to find a footing that would ensure she’d survive this. It was all in the small things at this point, the precision of where she placed what in a throwback to the first few lessons Mara had given her about using instinct to guide her somewhere.

And maybe, just maybe, Kay was using most of her focus to push and pull the slope into a more… Pleasant trip. Not that it was anything near an actually pleasant trip, but sliding to her death was not on her agenda for the day.

But then it happened.

A hole. That was what happened.

They fell.

… And fell.

… And fell.

Until finally Kaili opened her eyes and saw, well…

“Music guy.” Kay tried but he was still screaming. “Music-”

Didn’t work. “Oh for crying,”

“MUSIC GUY!” She shrieked to stop his screaming. The mood quieted down, her leg reached out to pat against the nearby ledge in a massive crevice of scrap. “See? We’re fine.”

The ground above shook and the sound of the hulking scrap beast grew more and more quiet as scrap seemed to pile on top of the spot where their entrance had once been. Oh they had fallen quite a bit, but a lucky girder seemed to have caught onto the boy’s jetpack and kept them dangling above a drop that seemed to be perhaps fifty feet or so beyond the ledge that Kaili began to move for.

“The monster can’t reach us here.” Kay shrugged and knelt down by the edge of her ledge to look down at the drop she stood before. “I think we might need to get down there.”

 

[Thaddeus Wyse]

[member="Kaili Talith"]

"Wha? Oh." Gabriel tapped the ledge experimentally before shrugging. "Felt like I was still falling."

It didn't look like he was much ashamed or anxious about his screeching experience. That was because he wasn't, of course. If there was one infuriating thing about Gabe it was that he was disgustingly comfortable with himself. There wasn't really much that could push him off his confidence streak. Faling five hundred miles down a gaping abyss while being hunted by some giant robot and screaming about it? That definitely did not count as a situation where he had to feel bad about it.

"Argh, that was so much credits you just blew up."

Oh no, he still wasn't over that, no good sir, he was not.

Presumably Gabriel would keep bringing this up over and over again. In a decade's time Gabe would still bring this up, probably. That haul would have been enough to pay for at least a week of fuel, travel expenses and glorious, glorious food.

Maybe even a warm bed.

That would have been good.

 

[Kaili Talith]

[member="Gabriel Lethe"]

The blonde woman continued to peer down the chasm as the man began to make himself comfortable on their little ledge. She could have found his comfort annoying or even surprising, but the the fact that he was a quick thinker and had no trouble adapting to the new circumstances under which they were currently trapped was really just a bonus. So, sure, he liked to talk a lot and think about who was to blame for his lost income, but hell, there were worse traits.

“Yep.” That was really all that Kaili could say about his lost credits. “And considering they would probably undercut your share, I imagine that was perhaps… Fifty thousand credits or so.”

She shrugged and brought her pack down before her to withdraw a small red flare. Kay tugged at the lighter, got the red glow poking from the cannister before she dropped it down the scrap canyon and waited for it to hit the ground. It seemed that the ground was clear, right? She couldn’t feel any prominent signatures in the force beyond the blaring klaxon stampeding right above them. So perhaps artificial life was out of the picture, or maybe it was overshadowed by the one above.

Regardless, they would be stuck on this ledge if they didn’t move, and they only really had the one direction in which they could go.

“We need to get down there.” Kay rose from her kneel and put her pack on her back again. “I trust you to get that jetpack free, yeah?”

She looked at the jetpack and then the blonde man. “It’s maybe 15 meters to the bottom. I can make it, but uhhh… What about you?”

The sound of bending girders shrieked and shivered above. It was just a matter of time before they would either move or be forced to move without passing go or collecting two hundred credits. And it wouldn’t be painless either, but Music Guy was a clever man. He could figure that on his own probably.

“So, uh, I’m gonna drop. You got your end covered, yes?”