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​