Star Wars Roleplay: Chaos

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Won't That Explode?

Lira Dajenn

Guest
Lira sat on the floor in a massive Hangar Bay empty save for a small prototype airframe, herself, and a large engine pod that was hoisted into the air on a stand in front of it.

Mindlessly the young woman stared at the engine, her eyes were listless and tired, and her mind seemed to have glazed over into nothingness. She had hit a roadblock. A massive duracrete wall that stood in between her, and what she had been assigned to do. Puzzlement splayed across her face, and the spanner in her hand was in serious threat of simply falling by the wayside. A frown settled on her lips, and she shook her head, clearing her mind.

The Engine in front of her was of a brand new design.

She had taken components from a Standard Twin Ion Engine, as well as several other small fighter craft engines that she had found laying around in the temple. She had added internal compensators, additional power lines, and several new thrust agents that should all serve to make the Engine far more efficient and increase its power output by quite a bit.

However there was a problem.

She couldn't get it started.

Her skills in mechu-deru did not extend into the cosmos yet, most of the things she was doing were purely based on instinct and trial and error. Every once in a while she received a flash of the miraculous, some breakthrough that had allowed her to make a great leap forward. It had happened like that with the reactor, but now...

Lira was stuck.
 

Lira Dajenn

Guest
She reached out and grabbed one of the wires of the engine that stuck out of the side of it. For a moment Lira simply fiddled with it, yanking on it slightly and repositioning it so it looked neater and more in place, then suddenly she jerked her hand back and pulled it free of its housing.

“Kark!” The word came out in a rage as she suddenly jolted and threw the spanner all the way across the hangar bay. It crashed into the far wall, creating a small dent in the duracrete and leaving a mark. Letting out a loud sigh Lira let herself collapse backward onto the hard ground, shaking with rage, frustration, and pure exhaustion. The little padawan sighed, tensing as she felt on the verge of tears.

The pressure of this was slowly getting to her.

They had meant well of course, Knight Elspeth, Daeryd, Grandmaster Greyson. They had all been wanting to push her to her limits, push her to unlock new talents and find something within herself that would help the Order.

But it was exhausting.

She had not slept in days, hadn't rested in hours, and she felt as though she were simply wasting away. The road block she had struck was a solid one, and without passing over it the project could simply not continue.

Wordlessly, she began to cry.
 

Lira Dajenn

Guest
Her sobs echoed quite thoroughly throughout the hangar, and as the noise of her own cries came back to her it made her feel rather pathetic. After five minutes of crying the young woman attempted to collect herself, she took in deep breaths, filling her lungs and trying to stop the tears from coming. She placed her hands over her eyes, covering herself in a desperate attempt to halt her tears.

“Its okay.”

A nerve wracking voice broke the silence that had extended over the hangar, and Lira nearly jumped out of her skin as it resounded.

She sat up almost instantly her eyes growing wide and her face contorting into a mix of fear, anger, and embarrassment. Her head shot in the direction of the voice where she found Jedi Knight Bethany Elspeth standing in calming beige robes. The Green Twi'lek woman held a warm smile, and she looked like a comforting mother.
 

Lira Dajenn

Guest
Bethany Elspeth walked herself over the the young apprentice, her green lips quirking up into a warm smile as she approached Lira.

If she hadn't known better, she would think the woman was mocking her tears of frustration and exhaustion. Oddly enough, Knight Elspeth had been one of the most supportive of people in this entire endeavor. She had seen to Lira on more than on occasion, asking after he health, checking on progress, ensuring everything was running smoothly with the operation.

She had become somewhat of a den mother to those working on the project.

Though emotional support was not something she had yet displayed.

“Master Elspeth?” She said still teary eyed and holding on to her own knees. She wasn't sure what the woman had to say, but she was sure it would at least distract her from her own mind tearing itself apart. Lira didn't take failure well, never had. She had once tried building a rocket engine in her parents garage, when she had been unable to do so she had destroyed the workbench and her prototypes in a fit of youthful rage.

Something she saw as utterly childish now, yet she was still aware of the deep bit that was failure.
 

Lira Dajenn

Guest
“Padawan Dajenn.”

The woman looked kindly at Lira, then squatted down besides her.

“What is it young one? Are your troubles so overwhelming that you must break yourself?”

There was no hint of judgment in her eyes, no air of superiority about her, nothing that even hinted at the woman being here to tell Lira to just suck it up. In fact she seemed downright empathetic. For a moment Lira simply searched the woman, trying to come up with something to say.

How was she supposed to quantify what she felt? How was she supposed to put it into words? She was an eighteen year old Jedi Padawan, a girl that by all accounts had way too much responsibility for her age. She was in charge of twelve people, four Jedi technicians, two engineers, three hangar repair men and three supply runners. Each of them looked to her for orders, each of them respected her for some strange reason, and each of them was depending on her to finish this job.

And she had no idea what to tell any of them.

This engine pod, the brick wall before her, could not be finished by anyone one of them. They couldn't help nor aid her. She was the only one of them who could find the right combination, the right mechanics, to finish and get it started. Yet within her mind, she found no answer.
 

Lira Dajenn

Guest
Lira waited for a moment. She let the sobs carry her body, wracking her nerves and causing shivers to go through her spine. Her lip turned down into a frown, and she looked up at the large Twi'lek woman, her eyes glistening with unshed tears.

“I can't...I can't do it.” Her gaze fluttered away from the Twi'lek and towards the engine. “It's been three weeks, and I can't figure it out. I try. I meditate, I switch systems around, add parts, take parts out, throw things at it. Nothing seems to work.”

It was frustrating beyond all belief.

The engine simply seemed to be stuck. In theory, everything should be working on it. The systems were connected, the fuel lines were more than adequate, the sparking mechanisms were custom designed and fitted. Yet the engine simply would not start.

Lira theorized that it simply wouldn't start simply due to the immense surge of power it would receive once it did. The engine had been upgraded in such a way that it gave nearly three times the output of a normal ion engine, the raw energy from that was immense, and she thought maybe the engine simply couldn't handle that burst of power so the computer simply shut it off before it could even start, but that didn't seem to be happening at all.

She frowned.

In truth, she knew nothing.
 

Lira Dajenn

Guest
Knight Elspeth squatted down besides Lira, the tall woman still towered over her even in that position and Lira had to look up quite a ways to meet her eyes. The Twi'lek smiled, showing a great amount of warmth and comfort, something that oddly enough Lira had come to expect from her when interacting with members of this project.

“Why?”

The question was so simple, so easy.

It startled the young Padawan.

She wasn't sure how to answer. It wasn't exactly like she knew why she couldn't go on. She knew why she couldn't, it was because she wasn't making any progress on turning the engine over for the first time, but she didn't know why she didn't know how to do it. If she did she wouldn't have that problem.
 

Lira Dajenn

Guest
She gave the woman an incredulous look.

“Why?” She mimicked the word, though she didn't mock it.

“Why?” Again.

“Why?” The last was far more introspective then the previous two. “Because I've hit a roadblock. The engine won't start, but by all accounts it should. Fuel lines are in place, afterburner works, computer systems are running fine, everything on that Engine is perfectly sorted and ready to fire, but it won't ruddy start!”

Lira shouted the last word, grabbing at something to throw. When she found nothing in her nearby vicinity, she instead kicked the airframe of the ship in front of her. The mechanics of it screeched for a second, but the tiny foot of the Jedi Padawan didn't even create a dent.
 

Lira Dajenn

Guest
“I see.”

Said Elspeth as she stood up and walked away from Lira.

The Twi'leks eyes shot towards the J-1 Interceptor and began to search. The woman studied the ship for what seemed like an age. Her big blue eyes looked over the vessel for some time, shifting and changing, until finally she turned back to Lira with a very large smirk on her face. Resentment struck the Padawan in the gut. She didn't like that smirk.

She felt like she was about to be made foolish.

“Have you thought of connecting the engine to the power core?”
 

Lira Dajenn

Guest
Lira stood up in complete and utter bewilderment. Racing over to the ship she began to touch and feel her way around the engine, seeking the main power line. It was separate from the fuel lines as the J-1 had several dozen thrusters all over the underside and wings, each one supplied by a different line so they could ignite the fuel and work properly. The main engine had one of these. As well as a main power line to the small reactor that allowed it to work in its increased capacity.

As she searched, she came upon the empty port.

Her mouth went agape.

Two weeks. She had spent two weeks in idle frustration, anger, despair, sadness, and on the verge of a complete and utter breakdown. The problem all along had been so simple, so easy. Lira felt like the biggest idiot in the world. Slowly the young padawan reached back, pulling the fuel line from the reactor and blindly placing it into the engine port.

She bit her lower lip, and took a few steps back.

Elspeth did the same, and handed Lira a small remote control device. Lira thumbed the switched on it, pressing it down halfway. The J-1 sprang to life, its reactor burning hot almost immediately and its computer system jumping into existence. She frowned, then pressed the switch entirely.

With a suddenly loud uproar, the powerful engine burst into life.

“I'm an idiot.”
 

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