Private Where Skill Becomes Something Else

[Aren D'Shade]

The shop sat just off one of the older transit corridors of Empress Teta, where the architecture still carried the weight of something far older than the city that had grown around it. Stone and metal met in uneven seams, ancient foundations reinforced by newer alloys that never quite matched, the contrast giving the entire street a sense of layered history rather than disrepair. Outside, the world moved with a steady, industrial rhythm. Speeders drifted through controlled lanes, their engines muted by regulation fields, and somewhere farther down the corridor, a vendor called out over the hum of passing traffic, their voice swallowed and reshaped by the narrow streets and high walls.

Inside, the noise became something else entirely. Contained. Softened. Managed.

The door sealed most of the outside world away, leaving only a distant echo of the city beyond. What remained was deliberate: the low hum from a charging array along the far wall, the quiet cycling of power through half-active systems, the occasional tick of cooling metal that marked time more reliably than any clock. It was a soundscape built from intention rather than chaos.

Aren preferred it that way. Controlled noise. Predictable patterns. A space where nothing demanded her attention except what she chose to give it to.

The lighting was set low, focused only where it mattered. The workbench stood at the center of the room, illuminated cleanly while the edges of the shop faded into shadow. Shelving lined the walls, stacked with components that looked mismatched at first glance but were anything but. Every piece had been placed with intention, whether it was waiting to be used or waiting to be understood.

She stood at the bench with her sleeves rolled, hands already marked with oil and fine metallic dust. In front of her, a compact droid chassis rested open, its outer casing set aside in careful order. The frame was older than most would bother keeping, but the internal design had a kind of efficiency she respected. It had been built to last, and despite everything it had endured, it still had.

Mostly.

One of the servo arms twitched.

Aren stilled, her attention sharpening rather than shifting. She did not react outwardly; she simply watched the motion repeat, a slight hesitation at the midpoint, just enough to break the flow before correcting itself, as though the system remembered the movement instead of executing it cleanly.

"Not there," she said quietly, more to the machine than to herself.

Her fingers moved with practiced precision, adjusting the actuator housing by a fraction. No force. No overcorrection. Just alignment. She tapped lightly against the chassis, a soft, measured rhythm, then initiated the test cycle again.

The arm lifted. Paused. Reached the same point. And this time carried through with a smoother, more confident motion. Still not perfect, but closer.

Aren exhaled softly, the smallest acknowledgment of progress, before shifting her focus deeper into the unit. She opened a secondary panel near the core, revealing a layered network of wiring. Some of it was original, untouched since the day the droid had been assembled. Some of it had been replaced over time. The newer work was clean and efficient. The older lines told a different story.

"Layered fixes," she murmured, her gaze lingering as she read the history written in solder and insulation. What had failed. What had been prioritized. What had been ignored. It was not just a repair. It was a memory.

Outside, the faint vibration of a passing transport bled through the floor for a moment, a reminder of the world beyond the walls, but Aren did not look up. Her hand moved deeper into the chassis, careful and deliberate, not to replace anything yet but to understand it fully before she made her next decision.

The droid gave another quiet whir as it reset its cycle, waiting.

So did she.

Allan Alhune

 

[Allan Alhune]

Empress Teta, it had been some time since Allan had set foot on this planet. The sprawling cityscape that gave way to highways where sheep herded themselves like ants to a bountiful rotted harvest to bring back to their fat queen.

Not a single independent thought. Everyone here depended on a system that was held together by such a fragile wire, ready to snap at any moment that their precious patterns would deem abnormal.

The thought of bringing such chaos brought a slow breath from his chest. Chaos would have to wait for now. Though streets were crowded with maneuvering bodies, walking towards their mundane tasks, Allan waved through them in fluid motion, like a river through a rocky bed.

His cloak pulled over his shoulder that once held his mechanical arm, lost after a fight with a Jedi of the Diarchy. He was not frustrated at the battle, it brought a prey drive in him that he had not felt in centuries. The thought of the fight dotted his flesh in goosebumps and he swore that even for a moment, his heart raced just slightly.

He felt alive for the first time in so long.

He wanted more.

The scent of blood clung to the air around him as multitudes of heartbeats weaved around him, his senses guiding him to a small shop almost tucked away.

almost

His hood stayed loose over his head as his good hand clutched the seam of the opening near his chest, pulling it over the shoulder missing his arm. His violet eyes flared and slit vertically like sharpened daggers made to carve through the soul.

He stopped at the threshold of the door, placing his hand over the obstruction and listened. A lone slow heartbeat.

Thump thump, thump thump, thump thump

Good, someone was here. And they were working. He could pick up their words from beyond the door. His hand gently placed over the sensor allowing the door to slide open with a hiss. There he stood as a ghostly silhouette, violet eyes shining like eyeshine in the dark, looking directly at her. A small smirk appeared on his face.

“Good morrow, I am in need of some…assistance.”

His good hand gently rested behind the brown cloak.

Aren D'Shade​

 

[Aren D'Shade]

The door's hiss barely registered over the low hum of the shop.

Aren didn't turn immediately.

Her hands remained where they were, steady inside the open chassis on the bench, finishing the adjustment she had already started before the interruption. A small shift of wiring, a recalibration of contact points, nothing rushed, nothing abandoned halfway. Only when the system responded the way she expected did she withdraw her hands, wiping them clean on a cloth without looking up.

Then she turned.

Her gaze settled on him without hesitation, taking in the details in a single, quiet sweep. The cloak, the posture, the way he held himself just inside the threshold instead of stepping fully in. The stillness that wasn't empty. The kind that watched.

Not a passerby. Not someone lost.

Aren didn't react to it. Didn't mirror it either. She simply met it with the same calm, measured presence she carried into everything else.

"If you're here for repairs," she said, her voice even, "you're in the right place."

She set the cloth aside and shifted slightly against the workbench, neither closing the distance nor creating more of it. Just enough to face him properly.

"What do you need assistance with?"

Allan Alhune

 

[Allan Alhune]

Allan’s eyes fell to the opened chassis she was currently working on. His gaze sharpened as he looked around the shop in silence, not ignoring her question, but bearing the words that would weigh what he needed.

A step inside, his body slipped into the threshold like a shadow.

“Repairs would be lovely my dear.”

He spoke with a silvery softness in his voice, normally a voice he would use to lure unsuspecting prey like a carnivorous beautiful plant, but this time it was strictly for business.

He watched the way she moved, measured and confident in her own surroundings. Motions that signified that she knew every bit of space in this room and possibly the building itself.

Another footfall as he began to make his approach, slowly step by step the footfalls echoed into the room, a sense of cold fell upon the area as he drew nearer. Then he finally stepped into the light, pulling his hood away. Dark skin met with cotton white hair and a small soft smile appeared on his lips.

“I do hope I am not interrupting.”

He paused before he pulled back his cloak to reveal a mangled and twisted prosthetic arm. The metal’s sheen dulled by scratches and dents, wires that were once internal now reveal themselves externally, a couple fingers missing and the ones that remained were bent in unnatural angles. His good arm reached up to the mangles prosthetic and whit a sharp twist a hiss escaped and the arm detached from the specialized socket.

“How much would repairs cost for these damages? And are you capable of delivering?”

Aren D'Shade​

 

[Aren D'Shade]

The shift in temperature registered before anything else, subtle enough that it barely brushed the edge of her awareness, but still distinct enough that the fine hairs along Aren's arms lifted for a fleeting moment before settling again. Her gaze drifted toward the environmental panel mounted near the wall, not out of any real concern, but because her instincts always nudged her to check the small things even when they didn't matter.

I'll adjust the thermostat later, she thought, letting the observation pass without comment.

Instead, she let her attention return fully to him as he stepped into the light, and then to the arm he carried with him. The moment he detached it, something in her focus tightened, sharpening not with curiosity but with the quiet, practiced precision of someone who had spent years learning to read damage the way others read expressions.

She stepped closer without hesitation, closing the distance with the kind of calm certainty that made it clear she expected him to let her take the prosthetic if he was offering it. Her hands were steady as she accepted the weight of it, turning it slightly so the overhead lights could catch the worst of the damage. The scratches weren't random, and the bends weren't the kind that happened by accident. Even the exposed wiring told a story. One of stress, force, and impact far beyond anything that could be considered normal use.

Her thumb brushed lightly along one of the warped joints, testing the resistance with a careful touch that measured what still held together and what had already given way.

"...That's extensive," she said quietly, the words slipping out with the kind of understatement that carried more weight than emphasis ever could.

She rotated the arm again, slower this time, studying the internal structure where the casing had been forced open, mapping the damage in her mind with the same methodical patience she applied to every problem she intended to solve. After a moment, almost absently, she added:

"Looks like it got caught in a wood chipper."

There was no judgment in her voice, no hint of accusation or disbelief. Just a simple, grounded observation spoken by someone who had seen enough chaos to recognize the shape of it.

Her fingers traced the connection point, then the actuator housing, following the path of strain through the prosthetic as she mentally separated what could be salvaged from what would need to be rebuilt entirely. Some components could be repaired with time and care. Others were too compromised to trust again. The alignment alone would require meticulous work if she wanted the arm to function properly rather than simply function.

Aren glanced up at him then, her expression as calm and steady as before, as if the mangled machinery in her hands was simply another puzzle waiting to be unraveled.

"Depends what you want out of it," she said, her tone even but carrying a quiet certainty. "I can restore basic function faster, or I can rebuild it properly so it doesn't fail again the next time it takes a dive into a wood chipper."

She shifted her grip slightly, straightening one of the remaining fingers just enough to test the joint's movement, gauging how much integrity it still had.

Then, with the same simple directness as before, she asked:

"How long can I have it?"

Allan Alhune

 

[Allan Alhune]

His gaze followed where she inspected the prosthetic. He could see that she was drawn to the metal and what lay inside. A tinkerer with passion.

“You could say a wood chipper. You would not be completely wrong.”

His form shifted slightly. Arm folded over his chest beneath his cloak as his gaze sharpened once more. The more function the better, perhaps even some protections put in place. The thought brought a smirk to his lips. Time was irrelevant to him as she waited for a response, he then slowly walked around the table where the chassis laid opened up like a cadaver during inspection, his hand slowly slid across the table as he crossed.

“I will need more than just basic functions. I need something capable. Something that will not shatter under the might of battle.”

He paused for a moment as he drew a claw over the metallic table near the chassis, the metal screeched from the open wound he left just above its surface, stopping just before the chassis.

“You have a passion for machines I see.”

He slowly turned around to face the rest of the shop, his arm now resting into the small of his back.

“Keep the arm as long as you need it to bring it to not only proper function, but beyond. If that means a rebuild that is fine, I will compensate regardless, and generously.”


He looked back at her with a very cold smile.

“Such a small shop.”

His gaze wandered from wall to wall.

“Have you always worked in such a confined space?”

Aren D'Shade​

 

[Aren D'Shade]

Aren didn't take her attention off the arm when he spoke.

Her fingers continued their slow, deliberate inspection, turning the prosthetic just enough to follow the path of the damage, not only where it had struck but how it had traveled. The bends, the fractures, the exposed wiring all pointed to the same conclusion: force applied unevenly and repeatedly until the structure finally failed.

His answer earned the faintest acknowledgment.

"Close enough," she said quietly.

Her thumb pressed along one of the warped joints, testing what resistance remained before easing it back into place, careful not to push it beyond what it could still hold.

When he moved around the table, she registered the shift without looking up. Her awareness of the space extended well beyond her direct line of sight. The scrape of metal against metal as he carved into the surface drew a brief flicker of her gaze, just enough to note the mark he left behind.

It didn't bother her. She had done worse herself, shifting heavy frames, testing failed builds, letting something fall just to see how it broke. It would buff out.

Her attention returned to the arm. "You're not asking for a repair," Aren said, her tone even, thoughtful rather than corrective. "You're asking for a rebuild." Which, to her, was the better choice. Her grip adjusted slightly, more secure now, as if she had already accepted the work.

"I can reinforce the structure, replace what's compromised, redesign the stress points so it distributes impact instead of taking it directly," she continued. "If you want it to hold under sustained force, it needs to be built for that from the inside out." A small pause. "Not just patched."

Only then did she set the arm down on the workbench, not discarded but placed with intention, before finally lifting her gaze to him. "You can leave it with me," she said. "I'll take the time it needs." There was no hesitation in the offer, no sense of obligation, just certainty.

Her eyes drifted once more to the scratch he'd left in the table, then away again, already dismissed as irrelevant.

When he commented on the shop, something in her expression shifted. Not closed off, but measured, as if she weighed how much of herself she was willing to place in the open. "I've had the passion for machines, technology, and tinkering since I was a child," she said, her voice steady, matter-of-fact.

The next part lingered for a fraction longer, not out of reluctance but consideration. "No," Aren said. "I used to have a floor of a building to myself."

She didn't elaborate. Didn't offer context. And the way she returned her attention to the workbench made it clear she wasn't going to. Instead, she reached for a tool, already shifting into the next step of the process.

"If you want something that won't fail you," she said, calm as ever, "then I'll build it that way."

Allan Alhune

 

[Allan Alhune]

The way she shifted the arm, studying it, not daring any sound to distract her from her work, it showed some form of promise to him. She knew how to handle herself around machines. That evidence was solidified when she told him of her passion for machines, then of her prior workplace.

Allan continued wandering the shop as she spoke, looking and browsing at the various parts and tools.

“The rebuild sounds necessary for my,”

He paused.

“Line of work. I have all the time in the galaxy to wait, and I will make sure your compensation is substantial to the finished product.”

He slowly made his way back to the table, just in front of the chassis. His hand ran along the metal, the sound of flesh meeting various alloys whispered throughout the room.

“And what of this little project of yours? If you don't mind me asking.”

His gaze found hers, gentle but behind the eyes was something hidden.

“A passion for machines such as yours seems to hold all sorts of promises. I am quite curious as to what this one would lead to.”

A smile cracked his lips once again as he looked down at the lying machine.

Aren D'Shade​

 

[Aren D'Shade]

Aren didn't answer immediately.

Her attention stayed on the arm for a moment longer, committing the last details of its damage to memory before she set it aside with quiet care. Only then did her focus shift, not fully away from her work, but enough to acknowledge him in a more direct, intentional way.

She had felt him the moment he stepped into the shop. Presence.

A distinct pressure in the room's quiet equilibrium, the same way she could sense when a machine with unfamiliar design patterns entered her workspace, something that made her slow down, reassess, recalibrate what she thought she understood.

Her eyes met his briefly, steady and assessing, before drifting back to the open chassis on the table.

"It will take time," she said, her tone even, grounded in the work rather than the conversation. "Not just to rebuild it, but to make sure it does what you're asking without failing somewhere you can't see yet."

A faint pause followed, not hesitation, but thought.

"I don't build things that break when they matter."

Her hand moved to the chassis, fingers brushing along exposed components with the same familiarity she'd shown his arm, though the touch here was lighter, more precise. This one wasn't damaged. It was unfinished.

When he asked about it, she didn't deflect. But she didn't over-explain either.

"It's not meant for anything impressive," Aren said, though the quiet precision with which she adjusted a connection contradicted the simplicity of her words. "Just something that works the way it's supposed to."

Her gaze flicked toward him again, catching the way he watched the machine, not idly, but with intent. That, more than the question itself, held her attention.

Most people looked at machines and saw function. He was looking for meaning. Aren straightened slightly, one hand resting against the edge of the workbench as she studied him with the same quiet focus she gave her work.

"You're not asking out of curiosity," she said, not accusing, not probing, simply observing. "You're trying to understand what it could become." A small pause. Then, more thoughtfully, "Or what it says about me."

Her attention returned to the chassis, though her awareness of him didn't recede. It never did, not when someone carried themselves with that kind of internal structure.

"It's a stabilizer," she said after a moment. "Something that keeps systems from drifting when they're pushed too far or too fast." She adjusted a small internal assembly with precision.

"Most failures don't come from a single point breaking," she continued. "They come from small imbalances compounding until the whole thing gives out." Another brief pause. "I prefer to correct that before it happens." She let the words settle, then glanced back at him, attentive, steady, not guarded but not open either. Simply present.

"You said your arm needs to withstand more than it was built for," Aren added. "This works the same way." A quiet beat passed. "So I suppose we're both interested in the same thing," she said. "Making sure something holds under pressure."

Allan Alhune

 

[Allan Alhune]

“So, a repair droid? Forgive me, my technical skills are quite lacking.”

His gaze lingered on the droid for a moment longer before he took answered her further.

“When I look at things I look at potential.”

His hand drifted off the droid and back to the table, a gentle tapping sound resonated from his fingers from soft impacts on the metal table.

“You seem like you have a lot of experience with working with droids and refurbishing.”

His eyes wandered once more around the room the back to her as if looking through her very being.

“That tells me you are not afraid of failure.”

He walked away from the table with quiet slow steps towards a small rack that held different tools and sockets.

“I look at these tools,”

His eyes flashed as the force pulsed through his retinas, labeling the fault lines and weak points of each tool.

“Their chips, cracks and points of wear and tear.”

His hand delicately picked up a ratchet, gently and slowly twisting it as the clicks sounded off, but every now and then there would be a skip in its rhythm.

“These tools are not of the quality of your needs.”

His vibrant violet eyes fell to her, her fault lines and force-like veins present to him.

“Why not replace them?”

Aren D'Shade​

 

[Aren D'Shade]

Aren didn't answer him immediately. Her attention stayed on the chassis for a moment longer, her fingers resting lightly against its frame as though confirming something through touch alone, some minute detail she could sense more clearly than she could explain. Only then did she give a small, almost absent shake of her head at his assumption, the motion more thoughtful than dismissive.

"It isn't anything just yet," she said, her voice even, the words shaped by consideration rather than correction.

Her hand drifted along the edge of the open shell, tracing the exposed connection points and the empty housings where something far more complex would eventually sit. The gesture was unhurried, almost meditative, as if she were mapping out possibilities rather than describing them.

"Right now it's a shell and nothing more."

She adjusted one of the internal mounts by a fraction, not because it needed it, but because she couldn't quite stop herself from refining what was in front of her, before continuing, her tone steady and unembellished.

"It could become an assassin or military droid, a nanny, even a protocol unit," she said, listing the possibilities without emphasis, as though each one carried the same potential weight. "It has no brain or programming."

A brief pause followed, quiet but not empty.

"No purpose yet."

Only then did she shift her attention back to him, following the movement of his hand as he tested the ratchet. She listened to the uneven rhythm he pointed out, her gaze lingering on the tool not with defensiveness or dismissal, but with a calm, measured awareness.

"They work," she said simply, the statement tied not to pride in the tools themselves but to the fact that they still served the function she needed.

When he asked his question, her eyes lifted to meet his again, steady, unguarded in a way that didn't invite deeper probing but didn't shy from it either.

"These are what I was able to afford after losing my previous… place."

The word hung there, unfinished, carrying more weight in what she didn't say than in what she did. She didn't elaborate, didn't soften it, didn't offer context she wasn't ready to give.

Instead, she reached out and took the ratchet from his hand, turning it once with practiced familiarity. The skip was there, exactly where he'd felt it. Aren adjusted her grip and gave it another turn, compensating for the flaw without needing to think about how.

"I know where it fails," she said, her voice quiet but certain.

Her gaze flicked back to him, a brief, steady acknowledgment.

"So I work around it."

She set the tool back down with the same quiet care she gave everything on her bench, not precious, not careless, simply deliberate.

"Replacing everything isn't always necessary," she added, her tone thoughtful rather than resistant. "Sometimes it's just… easier to understand what you already have."

Her attention drifted across the workbench then, the scattered tools, the unfinished chassis, the pieces waiting for purpose, and something in her expression shifted, subtle but present.

"Until you need more."

Allan Alhune

 

[Allan Alhune]

He listened in silence as she spoke, the ratchet clung loosely in his hand not held in possessiveness but in quiet curiosity.

“Ah but it is something, it is possibility and it is choice. Someone's many paths you can choose for it leading to multiple stories for such an insignificant thing.”

His voice quieted when he spoke again.

“It may not have purpose but it has promise.”

When she took back the ratchet he did not fight back, he let the tool go back to its rightful owner, no changes made. He watched how delicately and expertly she held it in her hand, testing it before setting it back down.

“Your previous place? I assume it was much more capable than this small room?”

He walked behind her, his footsteps silent and his body moved in such effortless fluidity that he seemed as if he were floating.

“The tools here may work, for now. They may get the job done for now as well. But the satisfaction of finishing a project and knowing that you completed something with subpar tools could make that satisfaction…lacking.”

He stopped just behind her, a looming shadow that bloated the light from the shop over her almost like an eclipse.

“You will always need more.”

His hand relaxed to his side as he breathed quietly and slowly. The intrusion came first as a knock, requesting to come inside her mind. A soft silvery voice offering a temptation of salvation.

Enough to open the door if only a crack, but a crack was enough. His consciousness started to flood her thoughts. Like hands hungering for knowledge every file, every memory was looked into of what would be declared her prior home and its workshop.

It was quick, it was brutal and it was efficient. Try as hard as she liked he would see all he needed to see.

Aren D'Shade​

 

[Aren D'Shade]

Aren felt it the moment it brushed against her mind, not as sound or touch, but as pressure, a quiet shift that did not belong to the room and did not originate from anything physical. It moved through her with the same inevitability as a system override already in progress, something that did not truly ask permission in any way that mattered. The "knock" was there, yes, but it carried the unmistakable signature of someone who treated access as a formality rather than a request, as if the outcome had already been decided before the question was ever posed.

Her body stilled in response.

She did not freeze, and she did not panic. Instead, she focused.

For the briefest fraction of a second, instinct urged her to shut everything down, to slam every door closed and sever the connection before it could take root, but the impulse passed as quickly as it came. In its place, something colder and more deliberate took hold, shaped by years of understanding how systems behaved when they were pushed too hard or approached with too little subtlety.

Because this was a system, whether it was meant to be understood that way or not. And she understood systems.

If she fought it as a blunt intrusion, she would lose everything it reached for. If she treated it like an access attempt instead, something structured and traceable, she could control what it saw and where it was allowed to go.

So she did not resist outright. She redirected.

Her breathing remained even and controlled, her posture unchanged, her hand resting lightly against the workbench to anchor her physically while her thoughts shifted inward. Layers began to form, not as rigid walls meant to block, but as pathways designed to guide, each one structured, ordered, and intentional. She shaped the flow the same way she would guide a diagnostic trace through a complex system, allowing it to move only where she chose rather than where it might naturally drift.

He would see. Just not everything.

Zakuul surfaced first, clean and unguarded, presented without distortion. A childhood that appeared exactly as it should, filled with warm light filtering through high windows and the quiet, steady hum of a stable world. Her parents' voices lingered in the background, distant but present, while smaller versions of herself sat cross-legged on the floor, dismantling broken droids with careful curiosity. Circuits were laid out in neat rows, failures followed by adjustments, and adjustments followed by success, the process repeating itself again and again in a steady rhythm of learning and refinement.

That part she allowed through without resistance. It was true, and it was harmless.

The thread continued naturally from there, unfolding into the moment she left home, carrying with it the uncertainty of stepping into a galaxy that did not care whether she understood it or not. It moved through the memory of meeting her brother, and the subtle but unmistakable shift when the Force first made itself known to her, not as something overwhelming or destructive, but as awareness, as something that could be listened to, shaped, and interpreted rather than simply wielded.

That, too, was real.

Then came Rann, softer in tone and warmer in presence, representing a different kind of grounding altogether. This was not something she had taken apart or rebuilt, but something she had created alongside another person, something that mattered in a way she did not examine too closely, though its presence lingered all the same.

Darkwire followed, but only in outline rather than depth. The structure of it remained intact, the work, the systems, and the networks she had learned to navigate, all visible enough to demonstrate capability and growth. It was enough to make sense of who she had become and how she operated, but not enough to expose the deeper layers beneath it.

Because by that point, she had already begun to shift the flow more deliberately. What he reached for next did not present itself cleanly. Denon fractured under the pressure of his search.

The memory did not disappear entirely, but it lost cohesion as its edges blurred and its structure collapsed into incomplete and disjointed fragments. The building's floor remained, but without context. Tools existed without origin, work persisted without purpose, and systems layered over one another in a way that no longer resolved into anything meaningful. The deeper he tried to follow it, the more it unraveled into overlapping threads of irrelevant data and pathways that led nowhere.

If he pushed harder into that space, he would not find a barrier waiting for him. He would find a maze.

It was cold, precise, and deliberately inefficient, designed not to stop him outright but to waste his time, to mislead, and to bury anything of value beneath layers of noise and misdirection.

And beneath that, buried far deeper than anything he could reach without abandoning subtlety entirely, were the things she would not allow him to see. Not the experiments. Not the reasons behind them. Not the moment when everything had come apart.

Those remained untouched.

Her awareness returned to the present the moment his presence began to recede, the pressure lifting in a way that left the air feeling thinner and sharper than before. Her hand tightened slightly against the edge of the workbench, the only outward indication that anything had occurred, though her expression remained composed and controlled, as if nothing had interrupted her at all.

When she spoke, her voice was steady and even, carrying no trace of being shaken or unsettled. "You should not do that again." There was no accusation in her tone and no anger, only a line drawn with quiet certainty, something firm enough to be understood without needing to be reinforced.

Her gaze lifted to meet his fully now, assessing him not as a customer, not even as a curiosity, but as something that required adjustment, something that needed to be understood differently moving forward.

"You're looking for weaknesses," she continued, her voice low and measured, "for fault lines that you think will tell you what matters." A small pause followed, deliberate and unhurried, allowing the weight of the statement to settle. "You won't find what you think you will."

Her attention shifted back to the chassis after that, her hand returning to it with the same precision as before, though there was a sharper edge to her movements now, something more refined and controlled in response to what had just happened.

"If you want the arm rebuilt," Aren said, her tone settling back into something practical and grounded in the work itself, "then that's what I'll do."

There was a brief pause before she added, her voice quieter but no less certain, "But access is not the same as understanding."

She did not look at him again after that, not because she could not, but because she no longer needed to.

Allan Alhune

 

[Allan Alhune]

“Was simply curious.”

A grin cracked his lips as he looked at her.

“Sometimes more information is shared when something is hidden.”

He quietly looked around the room as she spoke, her words not lost on him as he took in the surroundings even further.

Every second of observation pointed out new details of the shop and its inadequacy, at least to his standards.

“I look for weaknesses in everything. It's how I measure a tool. If I were to not look for weaknesses in a tool I needed, then it would break in the most inopportune time.”

There was no apology in his tone, no light hearted nest, just sheer cold fact of what he was doing and what he expected.

“Do your part, and you will be rewarded handsomely. I swear it “

He walked back around the table towards the door.

“I will check back in, in three days time, to see its progress. If it happens to be done before that then all the better. No need to rush though. The better the quality, the richer the reward.”

The door hissed open before him as the now night sky seemed to greet him.

“It is a lovely night. I think I shall go and explore what this planet has to offer.”

A small chuckle left his chest before he exited the room. The heaviness of his presence and the cold leaving with him.

The room seemed, smaller now.

Aren D'Shade​

 

[Aren D'Shade]

Aren did not answer him immediately.

She rarely responded to words alone; meaning was almost always found in the spaces around them, what someone emphasized, what they omitted, what they considered so self-evident they never bothered to say it aloud. So she listened to everything he offered, and everything he didn't.

His curiosity. His fixation on strength and weakness. The way he spoke of reward was as though value could be measured cleanly in credits and outcomes. The complete absence of apology for entering places where he had not been invited. The confidence of someone accustomed to taking the measure of the world and finding very little in it capable of resisting him.

And beneath all of that, the silences. No name for his line of work. No explanation for the damage. No concern over cost. No attachment to the arm beyond what it could do for him once restored.

Tool. Function. Strength. Reliability. That was enough.

Her gaze followed him as he crossed the room, not wary, not intimidated, but attentive in the same way she watched unstable machinery being moved across a floor. Something powerful. Something that might behave exactly as intended right until the moment it didn't.

When the door opened and the night spilled in around him, the temperature of the room seemed to shift with it. The pressure he carried receded, the unnatural cold withdrawing like a tide.

He left. The door hissed shut behind him. Silence settled back into the shop, but it was not the same silence as before. Aren remained where she was for several seconds, one hand resting lightly against the workbench, eyes on the sealed door as though confirming he was truly gone. Only then did her attention return to the prosthetic arm lying where she had placed it.

"Three days," she said quietly to no one. Not a complaint. Assessment. She moved at once.

Music resumed the moment she reached the bench, low, steady, familiar. She always worked with sound; it kept her thoughts aligned, kept the world from pressing too close. The rhythm threaded through the hours as she began disassembly, removing every panel, cataloging every warped strut, laying each damaged servo in ordered rows across the bench. She stripped the arm down past the visible damage and into the deeper architecture, searching not only for what had broken, but for what had allowed it to break at all.

The original build was capable, functional, durable, and modular. Whoever had made it understood their craft. But they had built it with assumptions: standard load tolerances, predictable vectors, conventional battlefield stress.

He did not seem like a conventional problem.

By the second day, half the original frame had been discarded.

Aren fabricated a new internal lattice from reinforced alloys she had been saving for work that deserved them. She redesigned the elbow articulation to absorb rotational force rather than lock under it. She replaced the finger assemblies entirely, giving them finer control without sacrificing grip strength. She added redundant power routing beneath the plating so a single severed line would not cripple the limb.

She spoke little while she worked. Often not at all. The music filled the space where words would have been, steady and grounding.

Sleep came in short intervals on the cot in the back room, usually because exhaustion finally overruled interest.

By the third day, the shop floor was crowded with metal filings, spent components, diagnostic readouts, and three failed prototypes of a wrist stabilizer she refused to accept. The arm on the bench no longer looked mangled.

It looked dangerous. Not through ornament or intimidation, but through quiet competence, clean lines, dense structure, purpose in every angle.

Aren tightened the final housing bolt, then connected the arm to an external power source. Motors engaged with a low, steady hum. Fingers flexed once, smoothly. Wrist rotation held under pressure. Response time fell well inside her target range.

She watched the diagnostics scroll. Then watched the arm itself.

Only when both were satisfied did she lean back slightly, grease along one wrist, exhaustion beneath her eyes, and allow herself the smallest breath of acknowledgment.

"It won't fail where I can see it," she murmured. Which, for her, was close to praise. The rest would be his problem.

Allan Alhune

 

[Allan Alhune]

Three days had gone by. Within those three days a few missing persons reports had been documented and sent out to the public. Some female, some male all around the adult age category and last seen wandering the streets alone and under some influence. People that would likely not be missed.

He was used to feeding on stronger force users that these people may as well be mere junk food. Enough to stave off hunger but not enough to satisfy.

When he came back to her shop, the door slid open allowing his presence to spill in once more. Just in time to see the response time of the new rebuilt arm.

From across the room he could see the passion and effort well put within it, as if she had put part of herself within the prosthetic.

He slowly made his way to the table where the arm was still attached to other instruments for quality checking.

“A beautiful work of art.”

His hand reached out, running the pad of his finger across the housing of the arm.

Just by the touch alone he could feel its heightened quality, and the durability that lay beneath its surface.

“A solid instrument. But no instrument is complete without an orchestra, and every orchestra needs a composer.”

His violet gaze fell to her.

“You have done well.”

A small smile cracked his lips, eerily and almost animalistic. There was no happiness or joy behind it, only cruel cold calculation.

“As for payment, I promised you would be well compensated. I keep my promises.”

His hand folded behind his back as the loose sleeve of his robe hung loose at his side.

“Tell me, what is it you most desire? Tools? Knowledge? Power? Secrets?”

He let the options hang in the air before them, letting the weight sink in of what he was offering.

“You can have it all.”

His gaze flicked to the arm then back to her.

“You have a gift, and you hold far more talent than you let on. I can see it within you. You wish to show you can do so much more.”

His stance straightened as his gaze seemed to bore into hers, unblinking.

Aren D'Shade​

 

[Aren D'Shade]

Aren had the holo running longer than she needed to.

It sat off to the side of her workbench, angled just enough that she could see it without turning fully away from her tools, a quiet stream of public reports and local feeds cycling through names and faces that most people let pass without a second glance. Each entry reduced an entire life into a handful of details: age, last known location, a vague description of circumstances, before sliding on to the next.

Missing.

The word repeated often enough that it should have meant something, but it clearly didn't to the people reporting it. Most of the disappearances were adults, some male, some female, last seen alone, last seen disoriented, last seen in places no one would bother to look too closely once they were gone. They were the kind of cases that never built enough weight to demand urgency, the kind that dissolved into the background noise of a city that had learned to ignore anything that didn't affect it directly.

Aren's hands had slowed without her noticing, her fingers resting lightly against the chassis in front of her while her attention lingered on the holo longer than it should have. She understood this pattern, not from the outside, but from somewhere uncomfortably close to its center. There had been a time when people were variables to her, inputs and subjects, imperfect systems that could be refined if someone understood them well enough. The memory didn't surface cleanly, but its shape remained sharp enough to recognize even without the details attached. There had been clarity in that. Efficiency. A part of her still missed it.

Her jaw tightened, and she reached up to shut the holo off before the thought could settle any deeper, cutting the feed mid-scroll. The silence that followed pressed into the room more heavily than the noise ever had. She let out a quiet breath and forced her focus back to the workbench.

The arm. That was something she could control.

Her hands moved again, steady and precise, finalizing the last adjustments while diagnostics scrolled cleanly across her secondary display. Response time, structural integrity, power distribution, every system aligned within tolerance, every movement resolving exactly the way it was supposed to. It held. Of course it did.

The door slid open behind her.

She felt him before she turned, the shift in the room immediate and subtle, like a pressure change that didn't belong to the space itself. It threaded through the quiet she had just reclaimed, settling into it as though it had always been there.

Aren didn't look up right away. She finished disconnecting the external leads one by one, letting the arm stand on its own power before finally turning to face him.

"You came back when you said you would," she said, her voice even, though the earlier weight hadn't fully left it.

Her gaze flicked to the arm as he approached, noting the way he touched it, not just assessing what it was, but what it could become in his hands.

"It will do what you asked," she continued, quieter but certain. "And it will keep doing it even when something tries to make it fail."

That, more than anything, was what she had built for him.

When he shifted the conversation beyond the arm into something broader and more deliberate, she didn't turn it aside this time. She let it settle, let the meaning take shape instead of dismissing it out of reflex. Her gaze lifted to meet his fully, steady and thoughtful in a way it hadn't been before.

"What I want is not more," Aren said slowly, choosing her words with care rather than offering something automatic. "I already know how to build, how to repair, how to take something apart and understand why it works or why it doesn't. That isn't the part I'm lacking."

She paused, not hesitating, but deciding how much truth she was willing to leave exposed.

"What I don't fully understand is what comes before that," she continued, her voice quieter and more focused. "The decisions that shape something before it ever reaches the point of failure. The patterns behind it. The reasons something is made the way it is, and who decides that it should be."

Her eyes drifted briefly toward the darkened holo screen before returning to him.

"I've seen what happens when someone understands that level of control," she said, and this time there was no distance in her tone at all. "I've been close enough to it to recognize it."

The admission was small, but it carried weight in everything she didn't say.

When he offered everything, she didn't reach for it, but she didn't dismiss it either.

"I don't want everything," she said more firmly, grounding the conversation again. "And I don't trust anything that comes without a cost attached, whether it's stated or not."

Her gaze held his, searching now in a way that was no longer purely observational.

"But I do want to understand what you're offering. Not the version that sounds appealing, but what it actually is when there's nothing left to dress it up."

Her hand settled lightly against the workbench, anchoring her where she stood.

"If it's knowledge, then I want to know what kind, how it's learned, and what it changes in the person who learns it," she said, her voice steady now and fully connected. "Because everything that matters changes something in return, and I'm not interested in pretending otherwise."

She didn't step back. She didn't step forward.

"I don't need promises," Aren finished quietly, her attention fixed on him. "But if I'm going to step into something, I need to understand it before I do."

Allan Alhune

 

[Allan Alhune]

When she finally spoke his gaze pierced into her, attention on her but senses reached out around the room to feel for anything…unusual.

“I said, I always keep my promises. Three days was promised before I came back, and three days did fall, and here I am.”

His mouth cracked a grin.

“The cost of the knowledge I bear can be steep. But it will elevate you, ascend you to something that will grant you what it is you seek.”

His finger ran off the metal as she spoke, his steps slowly approaching her, for a moment the lamp within the room reflected the violet eyeshine within her eyes, something certainly not human.

A dark chuckle escaped him when she finished speaking.

“You wish to understand what I offer? And the price that is paid to obtain it?”

His hand placed itself on the table as he leaned forward to her.

“You wish to understand intricacies that lead to outcomes, yet you wish to understand the consequences of what it is I offer.”

He slowly stepped around the table.

“What I offer is not survival, scraping by only to survive what is inevitable the next day. I offer something to help you thrive. Resources, costs of debt removed. Possible bounties dismissed. I offer another chance. And how you come about learning this knowledge well…its truly up to you how painful it can be.”

He stopped with his back to her, his gaze falling on the various parts of tech that adorned the wall. His hand gently wrapping around a piece of an old droid.

“The cost of such a thing however…”

His gaze slowly turned back to her.

“Plainly speaking as you requested, is servitude. I need someone who is smart and able to cover themselves.”

He sat the droid part back in its place perfectly.

“You say you do not want more, that you may not need more. But I look around and I see nothing but potential in this room. Potential that could reach its true peak if you did have more.”

His voice fell quiet.

“This, is what I offer.”

His hand lifted as the room vibrated around him, pieces of droids and tools seemed to obey his command as they slowly clicked into place, tools piecing parts together into the cadaver of a mismatched droid that slowly came to life, a singular eye on the droids head sparking to life as it started speaking a gibberish that slowly turned into knowledgeable speech.

“A complimentary gift, for if you need extra hands of course.”

His hand slowly folded behind his back.

Aren D'Shade​

 

[Aren D'Shade]

Aren listened without interrupting, though something in her attention sharpened as he spoke, not because of the promises themselves or the resources he claimed he could offer, but because of the certainty threaded through every word, the way he spoke as if he had already examined the shape of her life and decided it was far too small for what she could become. Part of her resisted that instinctively, bristling at the implication that anyone else could see her trajectory more clearly than she did, yet another part recognized the truth in it with a speed that unsettled her more than she cared to admit.

Her gaze drifted around the workshop while he continued, taking in the stacked crates of salvaged components, the aging tools she maintained well past their intended lifespan, the cramped walls lined with projects waiting for time she never seemed to have enough of. This place mattered to her. She had built it herself after Denon collapsed beneath her feet, after she lost the laboratories and the resources and the illusion that she had ever been untouchable there. The memory surfaced uninvited the moment he spoke about thriving instead of surviving, rising with a clarity she had not expected.

For a brief stretch of time on Denon, she had possessed everything she needed to pursue her work without compromise: space, equipment, access, the freedom to think on a scale larger than necessity. She remembered moving through laboratories built entirely around her designs, remembered the feeling of working without the constant pressure of scarcity, and if she was honest with herself, painfully, quietly honest, she missed it. Not the fear afterward, not the flight, not the collapse.

The scale of it. The possibility.

So when he finally spoke plainly about the cost, reducing everything down to servitude without disguising the meaning behind it, Aren expected the word to settle badly in her chest. Instead, it settled with surprising clarity, as though the honesty of it was easier to hold than the half-truths others might have offered in his place. There was something almost grounding about the fact that he was not pretending the exchange was anything other than what it was.

Then the room moved.

Her focus sharpened instantly as tools and scattered droid parts rose around him, aligning themselves with smooth precision while mismatched systems clicked together beneath invisible guidance. The reconstructed droid awakened in seconds, damaged architecture compensating for flaws that should have rendered stable function impossible, and Aren stared at it openly, not because the skill itself surprised her, but because of what it revealed.

He could use Mechu-Deru, too.

Recognition flickered across her expression before she could suppress it. She knew exactly what she was seeing because she herself could touch machinery through the Force, could feel circuitry and systems like extensions of thought rather than dead construction. But where her own use of the ability was often subtle, restrained, shaped by caution and control, his moved with refinement and confidence, as though machine and will had already learned to cooperate without friction.

The realization shifted something between them.

Her eyes moved from the droid back to him more slowly this time, her attention no longer guarded so much as recalibrated.

"You are not just moving the parts," she said quietly, her voice carrying a depth of understanding that had not been present before. "You are feeling the systems underneath them."

Her gaze drifted back to the droid as it continued its uneven speech, the mismatched components stabilizing under guidance that should not have been possible through conventional means alone.

"The damaged routing. The stress in the connections. The places where the machine wants to fail before it actually does."

A brief silence followed, softer than the ones before it.

"I know what that feels like."

The admission left her with a gentleness she rarely allowed into her voice, and for the first time since he entered the workshop, she no longer sounded like someone speaking from behind carefully measured distance. She stepped closer to the droid almost unconsciously, her fingers brushing lightly along the reconstructed plating while her thoughts reorganized themselves around this new understanding. Until now, she had assumed his interest in her came from intelligence, from technical skill, from utility. But this was different. This was recognition, an understanding of machinery that mirrored her own, a way of seeing the world that aligned with hers in a place she had always assumed was solitary.

And somehow that unsettled her more than his earlier intrusion into her mind.

"I thought you were testing me," she admitted after a moment, her tone thoughtful rather than defensive. "Looking for someone competent enough to be useful."

Her eyes lifted back toward him steadily, the weight of her assessment clearer now.

"But you would not offer knowledge like this to someone you considered ordinary."

The silence that stretched between them carried none of the earlier tension. Instead, it felt quieter, more dangerous in its honesty, as though the ground beneath the conversation had shifted into something neither of them could easily step away from. Aren folded her arms lightly, not in protection, but in grounding, anchoring herself against the implications of what she now understood.

"You called this place potential," she said, her gaze drifting once more around the cramped workshop. "Most people look at it and see salvage. Temporary equipment. Someone scraping together enough to stay functional."

Her attention returned fully to him, her expression steady but no longer closed.

"You looked at it and saw what it could become instead."

There was no mockery left in her tone now, no dismissal either, only careful consideration layered over a growing, undeniable curiosity.

"And I think," she said slowly, the words settling between them with deliberate weight, "that may be the first genuinely convincing thing you have said since you walked in here."

Allan Alhune

 

[Allan Alhune]

He saw the change in her. Not just a look but a full body reflex of recognition after the droid was swiftly pieced together before her eyes.

“One cannot simply build a droid without knowing its every being inside. Every wire, every circuit and every diode must be known before a machine is born.”

He paused when she stated that he chose her not because she was ordinary and a dark smile appeared on his lips faintly lifting his lips to reveal a sharpened canine.

“I do not want something that is ordinary or subpar. Competence is a bonus, albeit a very important one in my line of work. But I see something in you, something that can be big, something that can move far. Right now all you are is potential.”

A pause before he continued, the last word hanging coldly in the air.

“And just like this droid I can turn you from something that was potential into something much more.”

His eyes paused over her, the chill in the room dropping by a few more degrees.

“When I see potential, Aren, I do not just throw it aside.”

He slowly stepped closer to her.

“Especially if someone shows great potential.”

He held out his hand, an offering of a deal.

“Would you like to be transformed into something more? To be transcended from what you were into something higher?”

Aren D'Shade​