Star Wars Roleplay: Chaos

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Duel Unreasonable Blood



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ALARIS PRIME | KASHYYYK SYSTEM
STATION DESIGNATION: ARCAS-9 LISTENING POST [DECOMMISSIONED & UNSAVOURILY REFERRED TO AS THE GLOWHOLE]
00:45:00 TO AUCTION START

After all the years of war and neglect, the station probably shouldn't have still been in orbit. It sagged like a busted lung and wheezed every time the hull shifted. Like one bad cough would break it apart. Too much old metal and not enough gravity integrity, only held together by rust, wires, and whatever grease-stained prayers smugglers believed in.

At its core, a molten eye glowed dull orange behind a fortress of broken hull plating. Someone had turned it on to time with the pending auction (or so Tansu assumed; otherwise, this thing was just glowing in space for millennia or two). Towers jut out at impossible angles, some snapped clean off and left to drift.

Once, perhaps, it was a Jedi post—quiet, orderly, full of meaning, home to heroes but today, it served as a glorified auction house for the desperate and the dangerous. Word was, a holocron was being auctioned here. An expensive one. Old. Real old. Golden-age kind of old. The kind of artifact that made people crawl out of their holes.

She was one of them.

One of...many of them. Tansu could already see the ships of others docking and gathering at the main dock; all lit up like a forge with humming shields and exposed repulsors.

"Not-a-that-a-way my friend." Tansu informed her co-pilot, Amos the family cat. "I'm all for kickin' down the door and causin' a ruckus, but that ain't it today." She cocked a grin at the cat, who barely listened to any of her ramblings. "Not to start with at least."

Instead, she took the long loop around the station's underbelly, skimming close enough that her cockpit instruments started to sweat. Down past where the platinf was stripped raw and scored black from old laser fire and bleeding coolant into the vacuum. She found what she was looking for nestled between two collapsed struts: a maintenance crawl, blown half-open in what looked like a decades-old impact. Big enough to squeeze through, small enough no one cared to patch it.

"Bingo."

Docking was a delicate affair. Her ship, featherlight, rest on the wreckage with a magnetic clamp and held fast. Life support pinged green for local atmosphere, but only just barely.

"You comin' or stayin'?" She asked the cat as she went through the final docking practices and finally turned to open her empty pack for him to leap into. "Alright parder, off we go."

Tansu popped the hatch, pulled on a breather mask just in case, and ducked into the breach.

Inside, it was darker than sin and smelled like scorched wire and mold. Even through the breather mask! She dropped into a narrow passage, knees bent, one hand trailing the wall as she moved forward through the guts of the station.

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Vyrin Treicolt Vyrin Treicolt
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R E N E G A D E
VYRIN
ROGUE JEDI
Tansu Treicolt Tansu Treicolt



He'd been astray from Concord Dawn for a short time now. Waylon was the last of them to remain on the homestead but someone had to bring the girls home. Even if, in all candidness, Vyrin hadn't taken to the open skies and endless starfield with reluctance. He held the control yoke of The Renegade with relative ease, no doubt helped by the countless upgrades, modification packages and illegal additions which made the light freighter into a formidable vessel. In many ways, he was treading the same path his father had decades before, even if some inkling of him wished to stray from the legacy he was brought into- such a deviation only mirrored the Wolf's ways in his youth. Before he'd reclaimed his place as 'Jedi'.

He lazed into the leather backing of the pilot's seat, feet crossed and kicked up unto ship's control console. The electric blue of the lightspeed star streaks enveloped the freighter's canopy. His eyes were shut in rest, arms crossed behind his head against the seat before the whirring of binary stirred him awake. The hiss of servoes before a metallic grasp at the arm of his seat tightened and began to jolt at it. "Ahh- what is it Buddy?" He said, eyes fluttering open before he glanced the way of the astromech droid near to him. It was a battered, well aged thing, much of its paint scraped off down to the metallic beneath. Though, proper care and modifications had seen the effects of the droid's wear and tear maintain its functions in 'tip-top' shape.

"Five minutes? Alright, alright..." He said, his voice thick with the drawl of the Treicolt's native swathe of Concord Dawn. A more rural and backwater region more ingrained with its agrarian lifestyle than the Mandalorian culture ever present in the sector. He stretched his arms out, bringing them from behind his head before extending them out fully, straightening himself in his the seat before he crossed his arms over his chest.

"You think it's a safe bet? This station?" He asked, lofting a brow to the droid who replied with a series of whirring beeps, its tone of communication often coming through with a tinge of static.

"Welp- I hope you're right. Though if you place bets like you play holo-chess...not sure I should trust your judgement." He chided with a faint laugh toward the droid. "Oh? Is that right? You were just 'taking it easy' on me? I feel like 'Pa was just bad at it more than anything." To which the droid adamantly denied, Vyrin ready to make another riposte before the ship snapped into real space, the hyperdrive powering down as the sublights commanded the ship's traversal forward. Vyrin grasped the yoke of the ship as Buddy plugged himself back into its console via scomp link to provide the micro adjustments that'd be needed for docking and maneuvering nearer the surface to the space station at a few crucial micro-seconds faster than the ship's onboard systems.

He made quick work of the small adjustments and maneuvers it took to dock the ship in place to which point he'd turn the seat around and pull himself to his feat. "Alright. You stay here and keep things all nice and tidy 'case we gotta make a quick jump off this scrap heap." He said to the old and battered astromech droid who tilted its cylindrical chassis back for the third roller to extend in its slow follow of Vyrin as he approached the airlock of The Renegade.

The astromech whirred with some precautionary binary statements to which Vyrin glanced back with a lofted brow. "Yeah? Ahh- damnit...alright." He said before he pulled open a storage locker by the entrance to the air lock. An old, navy blue flight suit was hung on a metallic hanger. On the left shoulder, the insignia of Saber Squadron with the Starbird of the Galactic Alliance on the other. An X-wing pilot's flight helmet faced toward him on a shelf, the front plating painted with the blood grain of Concord Dawn in blue. He grasped it along with a full face respirator and goggle set, placing the helmet over his head with a relatively comfortable fit before he placed the mask over it, clasping the oxygen container to the inner edge of his coat, a pair of sturdy gloves pulled over his hands, part way along the edge of his jacket's sleeves before he did a quick check over of himself. Lightsaber with its red leather grip hooked to his belt, a blaster pistol holstered to his left thigh. He drew it with a smooth note of the metal of its components slipping across the duraplast lining before he opened the airlock and entered the station. He took in a deep breath from the oxygen rebreather, eyes flitting around from beneath the reflective lenses of the helmet's goggles before he stepped aboard.
 
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The crawlspace ended in a half-collapsed duct choked with soot and bad wiring. Tansu kicked out a grille with the heel of her boot and dropped into a maintenance crawl no wider than a coffin lid.

"Like an omen or sumthin'.." she murmured, hearing her voice modulated through the rebreather. Amos meowed back, muffled through the thick leather of her pack.

"Y'gotta be ready to share your space soon, Amy. Soon it'll be you and a l'il ancient, glowy cube in there. I think we're gettin' close."

The schematics on her vambrace showed a vertical shaft two corridors over—a defunct turbolift that hadn't been serviced since before the Clone Wars. Most people would avoid it, but avoiding hardly made it to the Treicolt lexicon.

She reached the shaft and kicked the manual override. The doors groaned open with the sound of ancient metal grinding against worse intentions. A tangle of cables hung down like veins. She clipped in, slid down, then kicked off midway and caught a catwalk rail with both hands. She swung herself onto a side ledge—rusted out, half-collapsed, but enough to get her through a ventilation port.

"Kriffin' vents," she muttered, adjusting the collar of her jacket like it might clear the stink and started her crawl. "I am so over this sneaky banthachit."

The Glowhole wasn't built for folks like her—loud, free, accustomed to wild fields and needing room to run. Every hallway felt a size too small, and every pipe she'd crawled past had whispered chides in the form of oil drips and groaning welds. But if she was learning anything, it was that necessity often begat discomfort. And she seemed to spend more and more time crawling around on her hands and knees than racing through open fields. Such was the way of the galaxy outside the homestead —only one of the many lessons she'd learned since leaving.

Three meters ahead marked her exit. An old service hatch warped by pressure and time. One good kick and it'd probably crumble, but despite the aching desire to launch at something, she could hear Kyric and Talsin's caution in the back of her mind. Instead, she twisted the latch, and slid the panel open just enough to peek through.

The corridor below was empty. The kind of place folks stopped bothering to walk through. One of the reinforced blast doors at the far end looked like it hadn't moved in years… but power still hummed faintly in the seams.

"That's the one."

Tansu scooched back, braced her boot against the opposite wall, and launched herself forward with a short grunt. The hatch snapped loose and she dropped down in a crouch, landing hard on bent knees.

She stood, straightened her jacket, and rolled her shoulders.

"Vent time's over, Amy."

Darting across the hallway, she pinned herself next to the door and stretched her seeking intentions out into the room itself. Surprisingly, she detected only one presence. A lone guard. A real person inside. With real human needs.

Needs! Tansu had used this trick plenty of times by now. She focused hard, thinking only of waterfalls, water pouring, fountains flowing, faucets gushing – and in response, a sense of urgency filled the room.

Inside, the guard suddenly felt a desperate human ache that needed to be satisfied. After some frantic footsteps around their confines they found themselves awkwardly trapped in their room. Hurriedly and focused only on the swell of their bladder, they rushed open the door and raced down the hallway, darting hard left and out of sight.

Leaving the door wide open. She didn't even have to slice it!

"Thank you," she whispered and ducked under a bundle of hanging conduit—and stepped into stillness.

The chamber didn't match the rest of the station. Air changed as she stepped through the security door—drier, colder, like whatever filtered it hadn't cycled in decades but still ran anyway and the grime that clung to every other hallway in the Glowhole stopped just outside the threshold, as if even the mold knew better than to trespass. Poor lighting cast the room in a soft amber haze that pooled more than it spread, leaving the corners in shadow. And in the center, hovering just above a plinth of cracked white stone: The Holocron.

"Alright, spooky cube. Let's dance."

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Vyrin Treicolt Vyrin Treicolt
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R E N E G A D E
VYRIN
ROGUE JEDI
Tansu Treicolt Tansu Treicolt



His vector of entry into the station was hardly different. The flicker of cold luminescence from a lone panel light was all that illuminated the approach before him, his blaster pistol held securely in his hand with the muzzle eased toward the ceiling. <"Buddy you still gettin' me?"> He asked through the commset inbuilt to the X-Wing pilot helmet's rebreather. The astromech replied in its static-y binary whirring in affirmation. It was comforting, even if Buddy was just a waste bin on stilts waiting cozy on The Renegade, he was running the scanner array through the interior of the space station, able to follow Vyrin's progress and give him a heads-up to anything that might be closing in.

To say the least, this astromech was used to being the companion of a reckless space vagrant. All the while, Vyrin had only the faintest tether of his connection to the force to tug on in pursuit of the holocron. His boots set upon the worn metal panels with a quiet and deliberate step. He'd gotten good at sneaking about, a habit picked up from hiding from his siblings on the homestead from a young age. The corridor ended with a shut blast door, the panel alight in a dim green to which he fished for the button and the panel buzzed before the door hissed open with strained hydraulics.

The next corridor was better lit and more maintained than the maintainence way he'd emerged from, preparing to turn a corner when two guardsmen began their approach toward him, chatting in Huttese with one another, one of them hefting up with a chuckle to the other's remark as Vyrin eased his gaze around the corner. Their armor was wholly concealing, identity or alignment difficult to discern- not that Vyrin was wholly familiar with the Galaxy's governments and syndicates. He swallowed down a breath, adjusting his grasp of the blaster pistol before he pressed his back flush against the wall, easing back into the shadows, the corridor unlit by the sparse and flickering lighting of the station. He closed his eyes as they began to pass and yet, with his hazel eyes shut he could see. The silhouettes alight with a hazy cobalt outline as they passed along with the shimmering blue grasp tracing the immediate vicinity of the hall. He felt out with a prod in the Force only for his eyes to snap open.

The Holocron. And...something...something much more familiar. He wasn't trained enough to discern who, or what or why he'd felt it but once they'd turned the next corner he strode out from the shadows, glancing down the avenue of which the pair of guards continued before he closed some ground with a light jog, eyes screwing shut again to find the force thrumming from the Holocron in a more intense pull of his sense. He was close. Unnervingly close.

Another turn in the labrynthine station and he'd found his own entrance to the chamber which held the Holocron. He was not so fortunate to find a door slung wide open, the panel sealed with a red, inch wide square light panel on the door's controls to signify it was locked. He twirled the pistol in his hand with a well practiced movement before he slid it into his hip-side holster. He pulled the scomp link from his jumpsuit pocket, inspecting which side was which before he inserted it into the door's scomp port. <"Alright Buddy...gonna need your help on this one."> He said to which the droid replied with a condescending whirr.

<"Yeah I know you walked me through it but I'm trying to be quick. So just...okay...alr- nope...alright..."> He said as he began to work the door's control panel, twisting and inputting on the scomp link before soon enough, the door's status light flicked to green. His eyes widened beneath the sealed, single lens goggle before he nodded.

<"Thanks, Buddy."> He said with a low whisper to which the astromech seemed to reply with an appreciative tone of binary for the gratitude. He slipped the scomp link back into his jumpsuit chest pocket before he drew the blaster pistol again, his open hand pressing a closed fist unto the door's activation, levying the muzzle of the blaster forward as the door hissed open.

A figure was already looming toward it, another prospective thief. In the dim lighting and the respirators over their faces, he couldn't immediately recognize his blood sister. <"Hey- who the- who are you?!"> He said, his voice fervent but still in a hushed tone as he pointed the blaster at Tansu.
 


Tansu froze mid-step, one boot hovering just above the holocron platform. She was too mid-action to support the good 'ol backwater standoff trope.

"Uh.." Her eyes flicked to the barrel, then to the shape behind it—tall, wrapped, face half-hidden behind a rebreather.

If she were more cautious, thoughtful, and patient, she might have taken the time to try and look more at the half-shadowed silhouette. But she didn't clock the insignia patches or any other major clues stitched into the jumpsuit she knew so well.

Instead, she feigned bravado with a low groan and quick eye roll: "Man, why does everyone ask that question." Her hands lifted a few inches, open and relaxed. "Justa poor soul not expectin' company."

She cocked her head, weighing the distance and the stance and her next course of action. She could keep her hands up, wait for the buzzard to fire on her and pocket her spooky cube or she could ..

.. leap! Like a cat, she zig-zagged and ducked low and forward, under the muzzle of the blaster and its trajectory. Her shoulder rammed into the assailant's midsection with enough force to stagger and her arm came up to knock the weapon skyward before a bolt could fly.

"Ain't got time to play mystery masks!" she snapped, driving her weight into them.

From her bag, Amos meowed complaint for the jostling.
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Vyrin Treicolt Vyrin Treicolt
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R E N E G A D E
VYRIN
ROGUE JEDI
Tansu Treicolt Tansu Treicolt



The Treicolt let off a pained huff as his unbeknownst sister slammed her shoulder into him, slamming him down unto the ground from the sheer speed and force she inflicted unto him. But, for all she had the jump on him, his frame was much better constructing for fighting hand-to-hand. Albeit, perhaps a bit slower. He swept his leg at hers before he crawled back and snapped himself to his feet. He went to reach for his holstered blaster only to- wait...he was just holding it and- and now it's over there. And by now there was no better time than any.

He grasped at the lightsaber at his hip, wrenching it from where it was hooked unto his belt before he ignited the emerald green blade with a hiss and whirr of the kyber. He kept the saber low, held near his hips with a grip of the blade perpendicular to his body. A basic starting stance of Form V. But- he hardly wielded the blade with much more certainty beyond that, bouncing the weight of his heels between one another as he stood with an offset stance, left foot in front of the right. <"Lis-"> He coughed into his rebreather, needing a moment after being slammed into the floor. <"Listen, miss. I'm not trying to use this if I don't have to...but the holocron is mine."> He said, his voice still muffled and vocoded behind his respirator though his backwater Concord Dawn accent still thrummed heavy in his words.

<"So just...get the hell outta here...or else."> He threatened, carrying a faux weight behind his voice.
 

She'd had the advantage and then it was gone. Breath whooshed out of her the moment her spine cracked against the ground and she quickly rolled and snapped back to her feet, scuttling back to put distance between them.

Stretching out her hand, she willed the tossed aside blaster to her palm and quickly reversed the orientation of its muzzle to point back at its owner. It felt.. familiar. She took half a beat to look at it and furrowed her brow to look down at it. It looked familiar!

"Weird.." she murmured, more to herself than anything else and side stepped back toward the holocron on the elevated plinth.

Then she realized it. The stance. The green glow highlighting the patches on the jumpsuit. Mask or no, there was no way to conceal Concordian drawl. Especially not with the specific twang she'd grown up with.

No way.

Her first fear was that it was Maynard himself, hauling ass out of the homestead to find the girls and chain them to the radiator for the rest of their lives. But after a few tense milliseconds, she realized that was, thankfully, not the case.

And it wouldn't by Waylon. No way he was ever leaving home.

Glorying in the ridiculousness of the situation, and her upper hand, she threw her head back and laughed. "Aw come on, if you're gonna try and intimidate me you gotta sound more convinced."

This felt glorious. This felt like she was the eldest of siblings. How many time had he scrapped with her and pinned her with an annoying wet finger to her ear or face or slapped her horse to take off way faster than she was ready for or dunked her under the water a little longer than she liked.

Keeping the blaster poised, she reeeaaacched and plucked the holocron from its suspension. It was heavily angled and awkward in her hand, but at least she had it now.

"Nuh-uh, it sure ain't look like it's yours. This either, actually." She levied the weight of the blaster and hooked it into her belt while pocketing the holocron.

Amps peeked his head out the moment the glowing cube was added to the bag.

"It's you who's gotta get out of my way."

With her hands free, she called The Force once more, cultivating a telekinetic torrent that swept around her arms and pushed out from her palms at her brother's frame, intending to knock him into the hallway.

And as he was down, she went to leap over him and make her exit back into the hallway, sing-songing her discovery as she launched: “Sorry big broooo, gotta go!”

Right into the reappeared guard.

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Vyrin Treicolt Vyrin Treicolt
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R E N E G A D E
VYRIN
ROGUE JEDI
Tansu Treicolt Tansu Treicolt



He made the same realization in nearly the same instant she did of him. <"Wh- Tanny?!"> He said only to be thrust from his footing by the will of the force at her command, a grunt of pain as his green lightsaber was snuffed back into the hilt with hiss of the light collapsing back down into the leather gripped hilt. He turned from his back to press himself off of the ground, gritting his teeth in pursuit of his sister as she made her way from the holocron's vault.

"E chu ta!" The guard barked out, the characteristic buzzing click of blasters being set to kill sounded off and the same instant the tibanna ignited and left the muzzle of the weapon, Vyrin's green saber sparked alight again, deflecting the first bolt into the other before he sliced the blade from the collar bone to the abdomen of the one who fired before he kicked him down unto the floor.

Huttese barking emerged from down another corridor. They'd certainly alerted another cadred of sentries to their presence. <"Ahh- piss."> He let out, letting off a sigh before he snatched at Tansu's wrist to pull her in the direction he'd emerged from The Renegade from only to lead the pair into a trio of antiquated super battle droids who hefted their inbuilt wrist mounted blasters in the direction of the pair, a hail of blaster bolts streaming in crimson illumination of the dark hallway he broke his grasp of her, taking the hilt of the saber in both hand to deflect a flurry of them before he extended his arm out with an open palm- reaching through with the force to grasp at the torso of the droid before he closed his hand into a fist, the durasteel, servos and wiring collapsing in on itself before Vyrin sent it with pull toward the other two, sending one knocking down into the other.

<"Cmon, sis! Don't be stupid!"> He barked out, beckoning her to follow.
 

Colliding with the guard knocked her from her feet, and she only righted herself in time to see Vyrin cleave the guard through its torso. She gaped.

Flesh burned a shimmering orange and yellow cut line, smoking pieces fell away, and Tansu watched the guard fall. Her mouth dried up like Tattooine midday. She'd felt so uneasy over the past few months because of Talin Treicolt Talin Treicolt being quick-to-kill, and her brother too.. was it..in their blood? Was it just her that got uneasy with it? Was she in the wrong was it h—

"—Ah!" Startled and pulled from her initial shock. She felt Vyrin's hand around her wrist and she went boneless without protest. It was only the noise of others ricocheting through the hallways that brought her to her senses.

Vyrin was on a role. He made short work of the ancient battle droids, and turned them into dominoes rather than deadly weapons that had once upon a time been the stumbling block for Jedi of yore. On their sides, their spidery mechanical legs whirred uselessly. Before they could convert themselves into animatronic balls and get back into killing mode, Tansu's blade made its first appearance, and the yellow glow from her mother's sabre stabbed through the gossamer bubble not once but twice, leaving a sparking sizzle in its wake as she ran with her brother down the corridor.

"Don't be insinuatin' I'm stupid when y'aint the one with the prize, RiRi!"

Around the corner, Tansu skidded — she took it too fast and had to pierce her sabre into the floor to keep her upright and not roll an ankle or collide with a wall. Just in time for a pair of buyers in high-thread cloaks to clock the holocron in her pack (not hard when it was a glowing cube through the fabric). Instantly, they went for blasters instead of security. One shouted something in Huttese that didn't sound polite.

"Chuba naga doth wah!" She shouted back, and angled to shoulder-check the first into a control panel and dropped low as the second fired. Sparks showered from the wall where her head had been, and she gritted her teeth, springing back up to drive an elbow into the buyer's gut.

"Nuh-uh, That's private property, thank ye kindly."

The Glowhole was coming alive now. Red strobes pulsing in erratic rhythm, klaxons howling, all to alert the gathered low-life, scummy buyers that the artefact they'd be bidding on had been disturbed by the two Treicolts running through the falling-apart-hallways.

Ahead, the hallway forked: A bottleneck on one side, a service bridge over a heat vent on the other. A medley of guards and wannabe buyers already poured in behind them, too close for comfort and too many to fight clean.

Panicked, her eyes darted around frantically before she spotted a narrow catwalk overhead, barely lit and clinging. If they could get up there, they could double back toward the hangar unseen. Or, so she hoped. And it was too high to reach without help.

Too high like everything had been once at the homestead, when she'd been knee-high to a Nexu and Waylon yelled at them from the house porch as Vyrin cupped his hands and she ran full-tilt, boot scraping across his palms just before she launched up into the hayloft. They'd been chasing a half-wild tooka that got into Ma's preserves. Dust in her teeth, laughter in her throat, and Vyrin grinning like he hadn't just flung his sister into a rafter. They'd made a sport of it afterward, adding flips and routines to the boost until Tansu no longer needed it and could make the leap herself. Back then, she trusted and admired him with everything she had. That had been nearly a decade ago, but she knew in her gut that some things didn't change.

"You remember the loft?" she called out, sprinting at him full speed.

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Vyrin Treicolt Vyrin Treicolt
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R E N E G A D E
VYRIN
ROGUE JEDI
Tansu Treicolt Tansu Treicolt



If Maynard had taught them anything in the realm of combat or self defense, it would be to take no mercy when it came to protecting those close. The Wolf had displayed that on many occasions throughout the Third Imperial Civil War, perhaps waltzing too close for too long with an inner darkness, the flicker kept alight by good intentions for Loske and now their children. Vyrin held no restraint with the saber, though he wielded it hardly like the blade masters both of his parents were, even an untrained hand with a lightsaber was a dangerous one. He did well enough to get by, certainly in facing poorly trained or hardly alert security details like this one.

They were well in the thick of now. Trouble makers as they were back in the homestead though the stakes had risen a great deal from paternal scolding or extra duty working the land. It was life or death now, not that you could clock that into how either of the two traversed the chaos. Even in their lack of real weathering to the Galaxy’s mettle, they battled and waded through these disperate threats like they were childhood machinations of the mind rather than flesh and blood with hot tibanna.

When they intercepted the buyers, Vyrin flourished his blade in a quick deflection of a three round burst before he stepped forward and sliced the extended pistol hand clean off with a ring of orange surrounding smoldering flesh at the wrist, a stiff boot against his gut to send him into the floor before his attention snapped to Tansu in full tilt toward her. “Best believe it!” He said, the beam of superheated light snapping into the hilt and clipping back into his belt before he knelt down and cupped his hands to let her vault over. He rose up, bent at the knees and jumped up with a lofting will of the force to snatch her grasp and pull himself over.

“Sis…you’ve gotten a lot heavier. Just sayin’.” He teased with a grin before a crimson bolt bit at the edge of metal near them, snapping against the durasteel with sparks before he brought his commlink up to his face.

“Buddy get the Renegade purring, we got company!” He said into the commlink, a condescending series of binary leaving the droid before a more helpful set of directions back to where he’d docked the ship in the first place accompanied it.

“Got it, got it!” He said before he rose up to his feet. “There’s a vent that’ll slide us right down there. It’s just uhh- here!” He said, spotting the grate before lighting his blade once more. He pressed the shimmering green into the top and began to shift it clock wise before he nodded toward her to start at the opposite end and link with the cut’s origin to speed things along. Soon enough, a ring of yellowed, heated metal enveloped it and Vyrin grasped into it to pry it away with a grunt of exertion. Years of manual labor on the homestead paying dividends now.

“Ain’t nothing to do but to do it!” He said before he delved down the tunnel head first, a winding circular ventilation pipe that descended a few levels before it sent him rolling into a rather large cell. Another grunt of pain left him before he rose to his feet only for the thunderous footfalls of something in the shadows accompanying them sounded off. He flicked the L-shaped torch sticking out of a jacket pocket to life, revealing…a rancor.
 


"Ain't heavy, I'm dense." She huffed, nettled by his brotherly tease.

Admittedly though, she missed his barbs. She hadn't realized it until she felt the familiar warmth in her cheeks that started out as a flash of rage, and simmered into a knowing smile instead. And the transportation to the peaceful life of yore didn't stop there.

Buddy, Renegade — nostalgia bloomed behind her chest, fluttering within her ribs with an aching wist she thought she'd shed a year ago.

"You have THE RENEGADE?" Both jealous and impressed, she instantly made the decision to leave her chitty, rickety, mashed-up starfighter behind in favour of a ride in the family favourite.

She followed after her brother, but not head first, and was belched out with a similar level of discombobulation. It didn't make her landing any more graceful. She snap-rolled to a stumble, catching herself against what she could only assume was a crate, before stumbling to a proper stand alongside her brother, clutching her arm to steady herself.

Vyrin's torch clicked on and cut through the dark. The beam caught the texture of rough skin. Then claws.

"Aw, no," she whispered. "Nope. Absolutely not. No kriffin' way."

The rancor stepped into view. Slow, looming, and impossibly quiet for something that big.
Her first instinct was to bolt. But how? Where? All she could see was the outline of the rancor.

"There's getta be a way outta here."

Amos meowed fearfully from inside her bag.

The impulse to step back was powerful, but something kept her stilled. In any other situation, she'd try to talk herself out of a bad place. But she didn't speak rancor…did she? An idea flashed brightly, illuminating a suggested next step she latched on to and took. She clenched her teeth and braved a step forward, hand outstretched.

Her pulse was thundering like the hooves of the wild horses that used to run free around the land of their homestead. She inhaled through her nose, slowed her heartbeat and felt the air shift.

"C'mon now." She whispered to herself..or..the rancor. She wasn't sure which. She was terrified, but she took another step. Her hand stayed open, her fingers soft and loose in the air between them. The Force stretched out to meet the creature's mind, not to command. To connect.

A brush of fear. A deep, aching hunger. Pain in its limbs. Long containment. Ready to attack.

They had a few things in common. She used those commonalities to strengthen the relationship between her mind and its.

"You're tired, huh," she said to the rancor like it might answer her. "I know the feelin'. Bein' kept somewhere you didn't ask to be." She felt herself flinch, realizing that Vyrin knew that place too. It wasn't so bad, home, but it had felt like a cage before they ran away.

The creature huffed, a warm gust of breath that stirred her jacket, and then flashed its teeth. Big, real big, as big as she. A low rumble echoed in its throat—but it didn't advance.

We didn't put you here. You're not mad at us. She thought earnestly. We're just trying to get outta here too.

Tansu smiled, struck with awe and wonder but still wired, still ready to bolt if things went south, but present for now. Feigning calm. Her head tilted her head back toward her brother.

"Soo unless you got a rancor-sized bribe in that utility belt, maybe let me try not dyin' for the both of us, and you find a way outta here?"
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Vyrin Treicolt Vyrin Treicolt
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