Star Wars Roleplay: Chaos

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Private Vertical Migration

will you sink down to me?
5zS0o13.jpg

E Ave 917.12,
Level xXx, Coruscant

// Yula Perl Yula Perl \\

She felt like she was stalking Kamino's deep oceans again. There were obviously a lot of differences between the memory and her chronic, Coruscanti circumstances—notably the lack of a tail and the fact that she was not the meanest fish in this duracrete sea—but one similarity stood out.

She had staved off falling into a cycle of marine-like vertical migration for nearly a year, whereas on Kamino it had been almost a 27-hour process. It seemed that the Sith and Maw's invasion, not the encroaching light of a science sub or an unusually sunny day, had finally breached her relatively new, nonexistent water column. It left her but one choice, as it always had: dive. Get away from the Light, embrace the Dark.

Although she didn't want to do the either, she heeded the former. It'd be a matter of time before the Order figured out her—their—secret. Then it wouldn't matter that Damsy, that Kai, had fought for their collective home. That Arisso and Ridy had prepared the Reef for those affected by the violence. They'd all be bodies burning in the public streets. Something you loved could still poison you.

In squaloid form, she had scales and blubber to keep her warm at pressured depths, but in the underworld as a human there was no such comfort. Her ragged, off-white hood did little to keep in either the stale artificial heat pumped through the levels or her own body's. Hope slowly leeched from her soul, osmosed into the destitute atmosphere all around her as she walked down E Ave 917.12. The more Damsy actually paid any sort of attention, the harder it got to ignore the bantha that someone had smuggled into the underlevels. Except that bantha was her and her people. That someone, just her.

As she pushed on with no mindful purpose, she dialed up her squaloid hearing to eavesdrop on a conversation between two humanoids standing under the awning of a run-down storefront:

"Have you heard those stories comin' outta Veshok?"

"How could anyone not? They're all over the web."

Indeed, anyone with holonet access and a brave constitution would know the folklore:

Haunting songs coming from the abandoned factory in the dead of night.

A wandering white phantom that no one had seen in some time.

Curious teenagers braving the dark only to return to their families an EEG blip or two away from brain death.

Damsy had found time to read them all. Though every iteration of each story got more farfetched, she could always see the unadulterated grain of truth at the heart of the narratives. Still, it was getting out of hand. Word hadn't reached the Jedi yet—as far as she could tell—but it would soon—she could feel it even without the Force. Call it survivor's instinct. The Sanctorium Sithspawn had run into quite a few actually-Sith-Sithspawn since the had been released; to Damsy's grave disappointment, she and the others had not once been able to pull their unkinned kin from the Dark. As if the Siren Shifter needed one more reason to hate herself. Considering the state of the underworld, the Jedi would surely take even the storytelling of smugglers and spiceheads seriously.

She needed to do something.

Soon.
 
Every underworld had its own flavor. Sure, they were all painted against a similar backdrop—but once you spent enough time skulking around the dregs of a city-planet, you got a feel for the rhythm. Denon had the best slicers, and you could tell who paid their protection money and who didn't. Shaddaa had the best deals, where everything from shoes to hyperdrives fell off a speeder.

Coruscant? Coruscant was oily. Best burgers around.

"Hey lady!"

Yula turned, curiosity pinned onto her face and one hand groping a nearly wilted jogan fruit from the produce stand.

"Hands off!" An irate Trandoshan stomped forward and the Zeltron reeled back on instinct, jogan in hand. The pink woman would have collided with a white hood, had she not found her footing at the last second. A cluster of neurons pulsed, and her cybernetic eye zoned in on the retreating figure for a sharp moment. Then, her attention snapped abruptly back to the shopkeeper.

"I'm just-"

"I saw you licking your fingers before. And then you go and put your hands on my fruit! Disgusting. Zeltrons, no shame."

It was true. She'd just finished her lunch, a basket of boneless nuna wings with extra extra sauce.

Inadvertently, Yula's hand tightened around the jogan, fingers sinking into the flesh that was far too soft and a sickly lavender, not the deep purple you'd find in the stores of the upper levels. The Trandoshan's eyes blazed, and Yula headed off that mess by shoving a few credits at his chest, chirping an awkward apology. Her mind was elsewhere, otherwise his derogatory comment would have earned him a face full of rotten fruit. Accordingly, she darted off into a side street.

"Sorrrrry about that…!"

As the pounding of her heart died down, Yula's vision shifted to pinpoint the heat signature her bionic eye had registered. A white hood. The phantom brain-eater from the papers? Couldn't be. She'd seen weirder, though, so a mind-slurping ghost that haunted an abandoned factory wasn't entirely out of the question.

Best to stay out of sight for now- so she paralleled Damsy's path the best she could, careful to stay out of her way but within the limited range of her ocular scanner.

As an afterthought, she brushed the sticky jogan pulp from her fingers, onto her pants.

Damsy Callat Damsy Callat
 
will you sink down to me?
In fact, she was already doing something.

But she felt like it wasn't nearly enough.

She felt that sinking feeling through her entire body, the one that comes on right before you lose grasp of something important and delicate, and drop it. It shatters, then, of course. Both of those qualities characterized the Reef—important and delicate, and therefore not shatterproof; she couldn't let it meet such an anticlimactic end, though she wasn't sure what catharsis would look like instead. It was one unknown against the other, but she knew enough about leadership to know what light at the end of the tunnel to run towards.

Or at least she hoped she did.

Keeping the Sanctorium secret felt like holding a foil of Pandora's Box. Dropping it would not let the bad out, but in to corrupt the unconventional good that Damsy and her friends had spent months gathering. Cultivating. Civilizing. Empowering. Any time it felt to Damsy like the Refugees had almost picked up all the shattered pieces of a patchworked culture that the Jedi and Sith had left to them as birthright, something would happen to make her realize how far they had to go.

They needed time, and a lot of it. Damsy was determined to give it to them.

She had finally been able to replace the factory's junky A/C unit, but not by smuggling it to their level. No, she had bought it from a mechanic like a completely normal person with nothing more to hide than the next Underworlder. Before she left the shop, though, she erased the man's momentary memory. Whenever he checked his sale logs next, he would remember he had sold some moderately expensive good to someone.

What? Who? Utterly, absolutely no clue.

A witness along her commute back home had, when questioned by the local PD precinct who had finally caught wind of the Force-influenced disorderly conduct one way or another, said she had seen a woman-shaped figure in a white hood and blue bodysuit pulling a hover trolley with a machine branded with the name of the shop in question.

No one saw where she had gone after that though—a white hood and 100+ kilos of durasteel disappeared into automated air.

It was a good reason to lay low, and get an idea of what the cops actually knew. She hadn't had any luck today. Her wanted holograms hadn't been projecting on any of the streets she had walked yet, so maybe the CDF were playing it safe too. Either way, she wasn't really concerned it would lead back to her; no one outside of the Reef knew her face.

Somewhat defeated, she decided to return. She traced a familiar path through the underlevels to the Veshok Apartment block. As she moved down those streets, mothers called their children inside. Pretending that didn't bother her was hard, but she managed, keeping her head down until she reached the shanty outpost standing watch at the hiding spot's entrance. She took down her hood, glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one was watching, and ducked though the hole in the fence.



**
Yula Perl Yula Perl
 
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A mechanic acquaintance of hers was having trouble balancing the books.

"You think I'd remember making a sale like that, but here it is, right in the register. My handwriting an' everything."

She'd only stopped in to see if he'd been able to get his hands on one of those new MechaCore power converters. Instead, Yula got an earful of the strange occurrence. Didn't seem to bother him enough to approach the cops, at least. As long as the creds were accounted for.

A ghost town. That's where the white hood stopped and disappeared into. The Zeltron was keeping track of heat signatures from behind a thin wall of dura-ply, so she counted out the customary 30 seconds before peering around the corner. All was clear- no white hood. Shimmying her way through the hole in the fence, she was careful not to disturb any of the links.

Before the leg of her pants snagged on an outcrop of wire and she fell unceremoniously into a tent.

A stealth expert, she was not.

Damsy Callat Damsy Callat
 
will you sink down to me?
Damsy failed to hear her shadow's mistake as she clamored down the entrance elevator shaft, only slightly straining for both each new handhold and to hear the activity well within the Reef. It sounded normal: not deathly quiet but neither uncharacteristically lively. Good. No trouble had found them while she was out.

When Damsy dropped to the floor and subsequently stood, she unclasped her robe. She jogged down the durasteel corridor through the open doors into the reception area. "Hey, y'all!" she called. "I'm 'ome!"



**
Yula Perl Yula Perl | Kai Bamarri Kai Bamarri
 
Damsy’s return to the Reef found Kai in the midst of a strange meeting. The doppelganger’s head snapped around to face the sound of her voice, a shaft of light falling across one wide blue eye in the otherwise shadowy labyrinth.

<So what do you say?> a voice in his head asked.

Kai gnawed on his lower lip. <I’ll think about it.>

<Very well. You know where to find me.>

The black-furred shape of Erictho hopped down from her perch and slunk away. Kai watched her go.

<Don’t keep a girl waiting too long.> The voice seemed to giggle, its laughter echoing through his mind long after her shape disappeared from view.

Shaking his head, Kai headed for the lobby, where Damsy was waiting with the new A/C unit. Arisso had gotten there first, along with a couple other spawn who were more muscle than brains. Together the trio were offloading the unit from the hovercart Damsy had brought it in.

Seeing Damsy, Kai briefly considered telling her about what had just occurred between him and Erictho. But he held back. Given her… attitude toward being a Sithspawn, he didn’t think she would understand how he felt. Besides, he hadn’t even made a decision yet on whether he was going to go through with it…

Instead, he opted for a simple greeting. <Hey. You got everything okay?>

 
Heart pounding in her ears, Yula scrambled upwards and braced herself—

—and nothing happened. Silence greeted the Zeltron, not a blaster bolt to the head, not a vibroblade to the back of her neck.

Her target had disappeared underground, that much she knew. The thermal sensors in her cybernetic eye lit up with the residual heat from Damsy's hands when she passed near the abandoned elevator shaft.

Down she went, rung by rung. Creeping steps brought her along the same corridor the sithspawn had sprinted through, following the dissipating heat of footprints. They didn't light up as colorfully as the handprints from earlier, and they faded quicker, but they stood out enough against the cold durasteel of the hall.

Voiced drifted from the open door at the end of the hall and Yula immediately flattened herself against the wall, looking around frantically for something to provide cover. Her eyes rolled upwards towards a grate in the ceiling. Surely that would lead to a v—

No. No, she'd climbed through enough vent shafts to last a lifetime. Funny thing is, they had this habit of breaking beneath her weight. Maybe she should lay off the Huttaburger, or Durasteelworks should really look into not using such cheap, flimsy material.

A stack of boxes half her height would have to suffice. Yula hunkered down and drew her disruptor, inching closer to try and hear what was being said. Whoever they were, they were more than one. Her brow furrowed.

Home? Someone lives here?

And why did that other voice sound so…familiar?

Damsy Callat Damsy Callat | Kai Bamarri Kai Bamarri
 
will you sink down to me?
Damsy had reached underneath the hoover cart that had been floating along behind her all this way as Arisso and the other two approached, locking it in place, before moving away. She tossed her mantle through a rebar rung on the scaffolding staircase as Kai descended them from the control room. "Yeah, no trouble," she replied. Her voice was tired as ever. She was so far past the point of taking solace in momentary peace.

Or good food, but a rumble of her stomach reminded her she still needed it. She glanced at her wristpad. The chronometer widget read a late morning hour almost afternoon. "I 'magine Motina's already served up breakfast," she added, looking to Kai. It was a statement, but a question was implied:

Did anyone save me any?

Hopefully so, or she'd be wandering up to the upper levels again.



**
Kai Bamarri Kai Bamarri | Yula Perl Yula Perl
 
Kai read her mind. <There should be some left in the kitchen.>

He ghosted after Damsy as they headed there, not because he was hungry again (though he tended to be, given his metabolism) but because he wanted to stick close to her. No particular reason except affection, and perhaps a vague sense of fleeting vulnerability.

Motina did indeed have some breakfast saved for Damsy. She set about making fresh eggs to go with the leftovers on the plate.

A few stragglers remained in the kitchen. Claudia in her hoverchair, peeling and eating a fruit while flicking through a catalog of saved seeds for her garden; Petyr delivering fresh groceries and offloading them in the beat-up old fridge they had acquired at a yard sale; the roachlike Ax trying to filch a melon, only to be swatted away by Motina wielding her spatula like a club. Claudia caught Kai’s gaze and giggled at the fleeing insectoid.

Nothing had changed for everyone else, and Kai took comfort in that.

 
The mention of breakfast triggered a rumble in Yula's stomach. A bolt of panic lanced through her, so she pressed her free palm to her abdomen and stared down sharply in admonishment. The gurgles faded with the voices of Damsy and Kai as they moved through the facility, and Yula exhaled in relief.

Whoever these people were—there were more of them. More than just the two in the lobby, apparently. Coming alone probably wasn't the best idea, but Yula was never particularly concerned at coming up with the best idea. Sometimes an idea was enough.

Some…times.

At the risk of walking into a cantina's worth of drug dealers or whatever was going on here, Yula elected to track them a bit further into the belly of the beast, but with a probe. Sadly, she hadn't prepared any probe droids when getting ready this morning. Happily, she always had one on her as it was.

This way, she could have both winged eyeliner and some reach.

Jamming her thumb into her left socket, the cybernetic eye popped out, caught by the middle and pointer finger waiting for it. A brief burst of technopathy caused four micro legs to unfurl from the bionic organ, after which it was placed on the ground. The mobile eyeball skittered its way towards the kitchen, its unblinking gaze taking in the surroundings while Yula crept over to the hovercart.

Was it spice? Arms? No, it was largely metallic, a note she made once a pink hand had pressed against the surface. Walking around the unit, she noted the grates on the back, then the fan she could see when peering through them. The prospect of this being a nefarious place dropped several rungs on the "Uh-Oh" scale, and Yula's lips thinned into an impassive line.

"What."

Damsy Callat Damsy Callat | Kai Bamarri Kai Bamarri
 
will you sink down to me?
Damsy took her plate over to the dining table and sat next to Claudia. "Plantin' season 'gain already?" asked the Siren before taking a bite of a rat bacon slice. "You got enough?"

No rest for the wicked.

Back down in the reception area, Arisso was filling out a flimsiplast inventory sheet in ur-Kittât rather than Aurebesh characters; a habit he had never broken from his servitude on Korriban. When done, he handed the clipboard and pen off to another Spawn who had appeared and approached. The newcoming cyclops nodded at the Technobeast before departing once more without a word...

Though maybe there would have been a word or two if strained grunts hadn't come from the two workers. Arisso spun around on his mechanized heels to see them beginning to lift up the air conditioning unit. Unbeknownst to them, they were beginning to lift up and away the cover of a pink-tinged trespasser. "Put that down!" he exclaimed. The grated metal box all but slammed back onto its pallet. The holorepulsors groaned with the reintroduced weight, while the two Spawn cracked their twisted backs of released strain. "That goes down in the Coolant Reactor. Come with me, this way."

With that, Yula's cover began moving away again—this timing rolling towards the exit Damsy and Kai had taken. The trio climbed the ramp up to the control room landing, cart floating after them.



**
Kai Bamarri Kai Bamarri | Yula Perl Yula Perl
 
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The air conditioner housing started to move, and Yula froze. The sharp grates on the back of the unit were only centimeters away from her, and she could barely move as it was. Finding her way out would be an ordeal on its own.

She exhaled audibly, the sound of which was fortunately covered by the thunking clang of metal on metal when the device was dropped back into place. Still, breath caught in her throat for a few more seconds—

"That goes down in the Coolant Reactor. Come with me, this way."

Quickly, she twisted, gripping the underside of the hovercart and gritting her teeth.

If the little eyeball droid hadn't been impeded, it would make its way to the kitchen where it would hop up onto the counter in plain view, staring at the sithspawn eating their breakfast. When this particular image was transmitted into Yula's photoreceptor, she hissed.

Little idiot. I knew I should've taken care to run some stealth code…

Damsy Callat Damsy Callat Kai Bamarri Kai Bamarri
 
Claudia, who was staring at Kai’s face in profile as if she were trying to commit the curves of his eyelashes and the bridge of his nose to memory, had a delayed reaction to Damsy’s question. “Huh?” She turned, then finally glanced down at the seed catalog. “Oh. Eh, I just like looking to see what they have in stock.”

Flicking through the pages, she pointed to one plant. “Like the dart flower. People plant those for extra security. Or, uh… well, they’ve got some recently endangered species now too…”

It was at that moment that Yula’s eye-droid hopped up into view. Shocked gasps and panicked scrambling away from the table heralded its arrival.

“... Did somebody lose an eye?” Claudia asked dryly.

Kai’s eyebrows rose. Without another moment’s hesitation, he reached out to grab the little droid.

 
will you sink down to me?
Damsy stood up at the eye's olympic feat, but didn't vacate her chair entirely. In fact, she leaned towards it, appraising it with her organic eyes until Kai moved to pick it up, and then she looked at him. "No, Kai!" she exclaimed. A hand flicked too quick for her—herself—to even process what it had called on the Force to do: throw the contents of a nearby cup to the left, off the table, before trying to slam the now-empty vessel over the durasteel eye.

Your way, Damsssy, came the voice of Syreni. For the first time, the aftertastes of anger didn't flow with her telepathic tone. No violencce. For the first time, it wasn't shock first and ask questions later.

Damsy blinked, surprised in many ways all at once. It overwhelmed for at most a few moments before she blinked away the mind fog. She could muse the hows and whys of the situation later. Right now, she wanted to make sure her people were safe—most of all Kai. "Don't touch it," she bade, looking first at her son, then glancing around the room.

For now.



**
Kai Bamarri Kai Bamarri | Yula Perl Yula Perl
 
The little eyeball droid stares at the group of startled sithspawn impassively, briefly zooming in on the only familiar face in the room.

When the empty coffee mug came swinging, it scrambled in place before trying to skitter away. Unfortunately, the boy was caught. Microdurasteel legs grappled helplessly against the table from inside of the ceramic prison. There was no escape.

Not so far away, Yula nearly lost her balance as the vision in her mobile eye went dark. Was that…had that been Kai? Dagon's weird sithspawn ward who's eaten a packet of spice like a piece of candy?

The hovercart came to a stop, and Yula decided to act. Unlatching herself from the underside of the trolley, she quietly dropped to the floor and pulled the Force to her, like a wave swelling along the shore. A deep breath in, and on the next exhale she pushed out, sending a surge of paralytic energy rippling outward in all directions. It was tight but concentrated, aiming to catch and immobilize anyone in her direct surroundings.

Damsy Callat Damsy Callat Kai Bamarri Kai Bamarri
 
Kai jerked his hand back as Damsy used a cup to entrap the eye, then gave her a mild glare. As far as he was concerned, Damsy had overreacted. It wasn’t like he was gonna try and eat it.

Probably.

Beside him, Claudia gave voice to the questions on everyone’s minds. “What is that thing? Where did it come from?”

“What if it’s a bomb?” Ax dared to suggest, giving rise to a mix of groans and snickers. Yet all their murmuring and whispering amongst themselves came to an abrupt stop as the shockwave hit them.

Silence reigned. The kitchen was suddenly full of wax figures, frozen in whatever pose they had been in when the paralysis struck. Motina with her mouth hanging open, one hand over her heart; Claudia with a finger extended as if to poke the cup; Petyr wide-eyed and crouching down to clean up the gory mess of a shattered jar of jam at his feet.

Kai too found himself paralyzed, the muscles of his face pinned in a particular expression. His mind remained active and aware despite being unable to move, and he immediately began to fight it. A pinkie twitched as he started to regain control of his body, then another finger, and another, until his arm was rising from the table and his foot was stretching toward the floor. With a final lunge, he threw himself backwards and off the stool. The jolt of the impact seemed to free the rest of his limbs, and he scrambled to his feet, lightsaber in hand.

<Everyone stay calm,> he announced, assuming the rest of the Sithspawn were equally aware and frightened by this turn of events. Were they being attacked? Was there an intruder running amok? Well, Kai was going to find out.

He sensed no other presences nearby, so the eye was his only lead. After making sure it was secured, he stood over it, facing the entrance, and waited.

 

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