Private The Running Free

[Dax]

「 THE RUNNING FREE 」
​

▶ Castell, Colonies Region
▶ Local Time 13:22
Talin Treicolt Tansu Treicolt ​

Plucked from multitudes of mechanical dross, an alluvial dampener occupied the grasp of a pit droid. With a series of inquiring chirps, the diminutive droid presented the component to the scrapyard's most recent customer.

"I said an actuator. You know, for repulsor drives?" Dax reiterated his request, a twinge of waning patience in his voice.

A low drone of disappointment came from the droid, its grip lowering back to its waist. It gave a hopeful head turn toward one of its mechanical kin who moved its gaze and timidly presented a small component of its own, an accelerator sized for single-occupant landspeeders.

"No." With vexation, Dax rubbed a hand over his face.

Harmonizing chirps came from the pair of droids, resonating the same disappointment.

"Okay, what about a heatsink?" He hoped something as ubiquitous as a heatsink would be easy for even the pair of DUM-series automatons to identify. "The coiled kind, about this big." A gesture with his thumb and index finger indicated the approximate dimensions.

Both pit droids beeped binary enthusiastically, nodding their heads and dropping each of their offerings carelessly to the ground. They scrambled up one of the scrapyard's many mountains of metallic detritus, sending various morsels of junk tumbling down in their wake. Every few feet, they'd dig into the pile in search of Dax's requested part. A third came and joined the effort, called by beckoning the whistles and thrums of binary.

"I need as many as you can find," Dax called out, descending a path of refuse mulch and nut-and-bolt gravel. Before disappearing around another scrap hill, he caught one of the droids falling into one of the holes they'd dug, only to be covered by a metal avalanche. As the other pit droids panicked and began digging, Dax shook his head and turned away. Scanning the face of the nearest mound, Dax resolved to search for a repulsor actuator himself. Otherwise, he wasn't getting off Castell for a while.

The BD unit on his shoulder pitched an unimpressed string of binary.

"Yeah, you're telling me," Dax replied.

BD-9 whistled more binary into Dax's ear, pitch undulating curiously.

"Be glad you aren't a pit droid, Nine."

BD-9 replied with a sound that mimicked a human hum of agreement.

Dax moved from mound to mound, sifting through any promising pile of junk he could find. All he could find was a cornucopia of things he didn't need: microvalves, naviscopes, catalyzers, even flux stabilizers. Not to mention countless parts so burned out and torn up he could hardly identify them. Frustrated, Dax ceased his search and sat upon a large cooling fin jutting from the nearest mound. A sip from his canteen washed away the grit and dust that had gotten past his lips from all the digging.

"Looks like we're gonna be here for a while," Dax conceded.

BD-9 scanned their surroundings, optical sensor focused on a point to their left. Excited chirping got Dax's attention, and he quickly tried to match where BD-9 was facing. A copper-green glitter caught Dax's eye beneath a cover of miscellaneous parts. Neuranium? he wondered. Repulsor actuators that fit his ship often had a grounding component of exposed Neuranium. Dax stood up, scrambled over a few low mounds of metallic waste, and toward the warm glare he'd seen earlier. Reaching out, he freed the component from the mound. It was exactly what he'd been looking for.

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

"You think that's it?"

"It's gotta be it. Thats gotta be Coruscant."

"I don't think we've been in here long enough."

"How long should it take?"

"Longer I reckon."

The two went back and forth, guesstimating how long it should have taken from Concord Dawn to Coruscant and comparing it to how long they'd been holed up in the cargo hold.

Neither of them had the navigational aptitude of their brothers. Or their droids. But they had the arguing power of all their siblings, and the never-back-down gull of their Pa.

So when they both (it was definitely a mutual decision if anyone asked Tansu) decided to scurry up from the cargo hold, sneak undetected through the ship to the escape pod, and drop early, both of the Treicolts were convinced they would drop somewhere on Coruscant. Somewhere far enough for Auteme not to know who her stowaways were and call their parents, but still close enough to be on the most glamorous planet of The Core.

All through the plummet, they believed it was Coruscant.

Even when they popped the hatch on the glamorous escape pod, they were fully convinced they'd landed on Coruscant.

It wasn't until hours of trying to find public transit into the inner city had passed that they realized this was not Coruscant. They ran into a handful of Gossams at a random diner on the outskirts of nothing, who made sounds that sounded like laughter and told them they were on Castell.

Crestfallen, lost, and destitute, the pair shuffled back to the escape pod.

"Maybe we could get a ride with someone?" Tansu suggested. The meagre funds raised by allowance on the homestead and their racing exploits were nowhere near enough for a new ship.

They might have been able to pay their way off-world, but it would deplete a majority of the funds they needed once on Coruscant. Passage for one was doable, for two… pricey.

"Surely we can boot it up again."

"Boot it up and boost it up. They said Castell was still days away from Coruscant!"

Tansu's hands slid down her face, dragging the skin in exasperation.

"We need so many more parts than what this thing's got."

They took inventory of the little pod's build and deducted that, among many other things, the most important piece to get started was an actuator.

—

They had spent half the day pilfering through scrap. Skin, hair, and clothing were marred by old oil and dust.

Restoring a scrapped ship seemed the most logical option - an assumption Talin had begun to question.

The yard had become self-service when the pit droids proved themselves no better than buckets of bolts, and a final piece still alluded them. Perhaps convincing a shady stranger they were worth helping was worth it. Tansu heard a deep sigh from her sister, and when she turned, Talin was sliding down the shifting mountain of rubble.

Tansu set her hands on her hips and squinted near the gates of the yard.

"Maaaan the service here is terrible. We've been huntin' for hours. Where are those droids? They said they'd help us after that guy, and like..why is it taking so long? I mean honestly, we are so much more in need..there's two of us."

Being the youngest Triecolt meant Tansu had little to no experience being denied. She was whining.

"What's the status of that anyway.." She leaned forward, squinting at the figure the droids were supposed to be helping.

The droids did not seem to be helping. But the guy helped himself, and when she squinted just right, she realized the shape of the necessary piece they also needed.

"Sonofablaster, Lin!" Was the only warning her sister received before Tansu stumbled forward, clumsily, down the mound of umbilicus, coils, rusted bent parts, dusty doors and oblong debris.

She raised her voice to the stranger, desperately balancing between the mounds of junk and trying to sprint to close the distance.

"Hey! Hey! My guy! Wait up, wait up! Can I have a sec?"

____________________________________________________________
Talin Treicolt | Dax
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​

 

[Talin Treicolt]

“Su!” Talin hissed, sliding down the mountain of rubble to race after sister.

It was the gossams all over again. Clearly, the younger of the pair needed a refresher in stranger danger. The elder was no wren in a hedge grove, by any means, but she at least liked to think she knew the rules of the streets a little better. One hand flew behind her back, holding the blaster she’d stolen from her parents. Iron stayed safely tucked in her waist band - but she sure was ready.

Revalation twinkled in their unseen connection. Turning the corner, the boy’s possession offered full insight. He didn’t look dangerous; far from it. Of an age with the twins, the fire mop atop his head was endearing. The grip on the weapon slacked for half a second; then retightened when he turned to heed their call.

A ghost of the past greeted them. His coloring was all wrong; it should have been ruby skin and amethyst hair, but it was Zaavik Perl . Flying into action, Talin grabbed her sisters wrist, pulling her back from the approach. The blaster appeared like it had dropped from hyperspace.

“Who are you?”

It didn’t make sense. The Sword Of The Jedi poster on their wall was yellowing, but the ruby shade of the zeltron had only faded slightly. When it was first hung, the girls asked their dad about the man. They knew everyone else in the picture. He hadn’t even looked up from his coffee when he offered the short reply, laced with venom.

“A traitor.”

The holonet had more to say. Dark Jedi, wanted terrorist, fearsome combatant. A scream from some abyss within screamed to shoot. There was no good explanation.

“How do you know Zaavik Perl?”

Tansu Treicolt | Dax
​

 

[Dax]

"Hey! Hey! My guy! Wait up, wait up! Can I have a sec?"

Caught off guard, Dax let out a very coherent "Huh?" before pivoting around to see the pair approaching him. An identical pair, as it turned out. Dax looked back and forth between the twins, slightly astonished. This was his first time seeing real twins in person. "Yeah? What do you-?"

The sudden brandishing of a blaster choked his nascent inquiry. BD-9 emitted a threatening whistle, the mini ARC caster fitted into its head crackling with electricity. A quickdraw of his own brought his blaster from its appendix holstering to point defensively at his assailant. The actuator hung in the grasp of his other hand. For a split-second, the lightsaber coupled to his belt peeked around the hem of Dax's overshirt.

“Who are you?”

"Who are YOU!?" he countered indignantly. "If you're trying to boost this actuator you got another thing-"

“How do you know Zaavik Perl?”

"Wh-?" Dax stuttered, confused. "What the hell are you talking about?"

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

Yes! It worked! He stopped! She took his bewilderment as flattery, and wholly to their advantage — and the sole reason he was willing to give them a minute. Tansu fully believed in her charm, even if Talin didn't, and was hastily offended by decisive yank on her wrist.

"Hey wha—" She caught the edge of a coil, felt her heel slip, and by the time she was fully righted her sister had the bad end of an iron pointed at the mop-top-stranger she was gonna try and befriend.

It was Talin's understanding that turned the gears in Tansu's head, and after a few rotations, she drew the same realization. He head whipped around to look at her stone-faced mirror, then she replicated the accusing glower at the fella.

Now two blasters were drawn. And the droid seemed feral.

Ho-lee-chit. A real standoff.

An excited squeal hopped out and she quickly sucked it back in and puffed out her chest to seem more emboldened. Talin was using a firearm. She clearly meant business.

"You doo look like him." Tansu offered half an explanation, but kept her eye trained on the actuator.

As long as she could imagine the shape and the weight of the thing, she might be able to put a grip on it relative to everything else. She just needed a bit more time.

"An' coincidence and The Force don't coexist so…." She gestured aimlessly around them, encouraging him to speak up again.

____________________________________________________________
Talin Treicolt / Dax
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​

 

[Talin Treicolt]

Sweat broke on Talin’s brow, and it wasn’t caused by the afternoon sun. Forethought caught up to impulsivity. Their rival seemed wholly genuine in his confusion, and mighty offended at their assumption. The dusty desert wind whispered warning. This may have been her first rodeo, but it sure wasn’t his.

"An' coincidence and The Force don't coexist so…."

A grunt of agreeance echoed her sister. Just because the stranger wasn’t aware, didn’t mean it was nothing. She could sense the scheming of her sister behind their conversation. It encouraged her to stand her ground, see out the scene straight out of a western holoflick. One of the pit droid rolled around the mound in between them, walking into crossfire. It stopped momentarily, processed, and let out a shriek before turning back to whence it came. At least someone in this yard had some good sense. It would likely attempt to contact local authorities. Given the earlier incompetence, Talin doubted they’d still be here by the time of arrival.

“Y’know.” She insisted. “Zeltron. Red skin, purple hair. Probably would be handsome if he didn’t look feral?”

Her free hand pointed to his droid, frustration cause her to jerk like a pole snake caught.

“That thing have a holonet link on it? C’mon, make him show you. You’re a dead ringer.”

He had conveniently avoided the first question posed.

“We’re Treiciolts. Tansu and Talin. Our parents knew him.” An arched eyebrow accompanied short words. “You gonna tell us who you are, now?”

Dax | Tansu Treicolt ​

 

[Dax]

BD-9 took great exception to being pointed at. A small utility arm with a fusion cutter attached ejected from the side opposite BD-9's primary optical unit. Binary blips and chimes ignored her holonet query, threatening to cut Talin's finger off if she kept pointing.

Dax shook his head, "You people are out of your minds! Do I look like a Zeltron to you!?"

Sensing some shift in the force focused on his actuator, Dax slowly hid the part behind his back. A tell of his mutual force sensitivity if ever there was one. "You flag me down and stick a blaster in my face just to ask who I am?" BD-9 added a series of beeps to Dax's question, accusing them of being unhinged. "My name's Dax, not that matters."

Shifty eyes went between the twins again, "And you-" Dax's words suddenly halted, his eyes sticking to Talin. Scrutiny showed on his visage, giving way self-satisfied grin. "And you've never shot anyone before... have you?" A single scoff came with a simple declaration; "We're different."

A click from his blaster preceded a whirring noise, his thumb activating the pre-charge mechanism on his blaster. "So why don't you put the blaster down and tell me what you really want?"

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

Somewhat at the point of the triangle they'd made, Tansu remained taut, wound up like a string with her eye fixated on the part they'd need to get off this planet and closer to their real goal.

Strings of binary made her arch a brow, but she didn't shift her focus.

"Really skirtin' around that first question.." Tansu murmured belatedly to the boy's confounded outburst. Even under her breath, that Dawn drawl was thick and slow. Her brows furrowed tighter when the object of her desire was moved subtly out of grasp, and her jaw tightened.

The sound of the blaster cocking was distinct and chilling. Tansu's pulse struck in her veins.

All she and Lin had ever shot were old bottles, cans, or other inanimate objects. They'd used blasters with faux ammunition for target practice while their brothers zipped around on speeders — the worst that would happen is they'd hit their target, and paint would explode. Nothing fatal. But just because what they shot wasn't lethal didn't mean they didn't recognize lethality. That blaster was a rare firearm, packing some serious firepower.

"Woah woah, okay, tough cookie, you're sure actin' like the guy my sister described."

Tansu actually had no idea what Zaavik was like, given neither parent spoke of him. And if he was ever mentioned, it was not fondly. There was no room for traitors and betrayers on the tongues of Treicolts.

"Let's all take a few steps back—back to the golden rule." She held up her hands like a referee, at least giving Talin the time to prepare her pistol.

"I," she pointed to herself, "waved you down," she pointed to Dax "to ask you about ——" her sentence was interrupted by the noisy shifting of debris and mounds of trash. She flinched just before calamity happened.

"Amos, no!"

A tawny feline, fattened from ample mice on the farm, leapt from a place unseen. The momentum caused the cornerstone of a pile to slip and make the entire mound built on top of it shudder and slide.

With a triumphant, war-cry meow, the cat's trajectory was solely focused on the BD-9 unit threatening one of its girls.

Tansu saw the gore before it happened. The little droid would turn around with its fusion cutter and slice a paw or an ear. Amos didn't deserve that! He needed all four little legs. She snapped to action, curing an invisible current around the cat to divert him from his warpath and instead at the redhead's back. Right above the actuator.

"Our cat!" she cried out, feigning horror. "I'll get him." This was another faux interjection and rationale for her lunge at the part behind Dax's back.

____________________________________________________________
Dax | Talin Treicolt
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​

 

[Talin Treicolt]

"And you've never shot anyone before... have you?" A single scoff came with a simple declaration; "We're different."

An involuntary gulp gave truth to his words. Suddenly, she didn’t feel very street smart. Talin felt small - foreign territory, confining and intolerable. Fight or flight demanded action, but instead, she froze, staring down the hole of the charging blaster.

Saved by the cat.

Their feline defender brought her back to the surface. Though she had been proven wrong about street smarts, chaos was a learned advantage as a twin, and the youngest of five kids. A lot could get by your parents when the pot was boiling over, your brothers were shattered prized artifacts in a wrestling match, and your mom couldn’t tell who she was talking to. The act had been seventeen years in the making. She and Tansu were perfectly choreographed.

“Amos!”

Ever her sister’s shadow, Talin stumbled forward, and a piece of hull just happened underfoot. The tumble sent her antics back home to shame. She met her twins ankles with a somersault, sweeping her off her feet. In the descent, the blaster fired off, a stray bolt finding a fence post. Tansu’s leg would become ensnared around her own. A fumbling attempt to catch them turned out to be a couple of rapid steps, predicated another fall. Her arms went wide, one snaking around Dax’s leg. The three ended up a few feet from the point of origin. Limbs tangled, no one took the high ground.

Spitting dirt, her head rose to find her face an inch from the ginger’s, and Tansu’s blonde locks visible behind. A rosy blush spread over freckled cheeks. Handsome proved an understatement. Anger and fear were replaced with something more appropriate for their age.

“Do over?” She asked with a sheepish grin. “I’m Talin.”

Tansu Treicolt | Dax ​

 

[Dax]

"Woah woah, okay, tough cookie, you're sure actin' like the guy my sister described."

From behind the sight of his blaster, Dax's eyes narrowed, unblinking in severity. "I still don't know what you're talking about. Now, unless you both want to get fried, I'd suggest you-"

A chilling noise drew Dax's eyes to the sight of some creature he'd never seen before lunging directly for him. BD-9's optical sensor immediately snapped to the oncoming creature, its ARC thrower crackling loudly as it zapped the 'cat' with a non-lethal dose of electricity. A pang of danger followed, and without hesitation, he changed his aim and fired at Tansu, assuming her approach to be hostile. Were it not for Talin's hiccup resulting in the subsequent fall of her sister, the shot might have been her end. Singed hair assaulted the noses of the trio almost immediately.

Another shot rang out wildly into the air as Dax's legs were taken out from beneath him. BD-9 went flying with a high-pitched binary scream. It flew several feet, landing within a cube-shaped container and disappearing behind a dislodged landing gear flap that fell to cover the receptacle's ingress. Dax let out a particularly vile one-word phrase unbefitting for the lips of someone his age before hitting the ground with a hollow thud.

Squeezed eyes slowly opened despite the pain, only to be met with Talin's face encompassing the entirety of his field of vision.

“I’m Talin.”

"Ah!" Dax shouted, voice cracking with startled fear. He attempted to scramble backward, blaster still tightly in his grip. A largely fruitless effort, struggling to untangle his leg from whatever had gotten into it. What little progress he made felt the increasing pressure of another tangled body behind him. Momentary paralysis was broken with Dax looking between the twins again, only their faces visible due to sudden, perilous proximity. A heat overtook his face he was unfamiliar with, and an overall awkward impression came over him.

"Dax," he reiterated, sheepish and nonplussed.

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

Amos' cry transitioned hastily from one of war to one of agony. Tansu just brushed the cat's fluff when chaos ensued. Her feet went out from under her, and luckily too, because a superheated bolt whizzed right past her ear and through her hair.

She yawped, more startled than hurt, and succumbed to the tumble, still frantically clawing at the freaked-out Amos. She managed to wrap him up in her arms and protect him while she fell, then Talin, then the Dax guy. Who or what happened next was nothing more than a misshapen blur and a major snowballin' incident with another random blaster shot that missed its mark.

The actuator was poking painfully into her hip, and she groaned. So much hurt. And there was so much pressure on her ribs from everything else. There were legs, arms, and blasters everywhere. Tangled and the origin of every which way was a total mess.

Their standoff had turned into a real spaghetti western.

She heard Talin's name, a shout of surprise, and then, on top of her, an attempt to move.

"No! Ow ow!" She protested the movement because the pressure from the actuator threatened more than a bruise with each wiggle or squirm. And Amos was being crushed beneath her. She could feel him thrashing and clawing until he squeeeeezed out, dizzied and sparking. Once the cat was out of her grasp, she was more acutely aware of the pile the trio was in.

"Tansu." She huffed, adding to the reintroductions and blew a singed wisp of hair from across her face. Which reminded her — "Dax! You shot me!" Full of disbelief, she gasped and tried to move her arm. It was wedged somewhere under Dax's back, and she tugged and tugged and tugged. "Maan, we just needed that actuator."

____________________________________________________________
Talin Treicolt | Dax
____________________________________________________________
​

 

[Talin Treicolt]

“T’be fair,” Talin quipped. “We did threaten the same to him. Fly with the crows, get shot with the crows. Quit wigglin’, Su! Gimme a second.”

So began the game of twister. Bend this way, weight up, ow, don’t move your elbow like that! After a good couple minutes, Talin was able to arch her back, leap up on her heels, and extend a hand to the fellow dunces. Everyone one was okay, though Tansu and Amos would reek of fried hair for the remainder of the day, and both would need to lick their wounds.

“It’s kinda cool! Dax, y’reckon you could graze my arm? Make me look like a grizzled vet?” Eyes bright, it was abundantly clear she was only half joking. “She’s right though… we really did need the actuator. Y’see, we stowed away, but someone released our escape pod waaay too early, and now we’re gonna be stuck here forever if we can’t get one! We don’t belong here! This place is even worse than Concord Dawn. At least we didn’t have to worry about being sold by the gossams, back home.”

Passion fueled her words - what teenager girl didn’t dream of city lights? But as she picked up the blaster from where it had settled in the dirt, fire sent the barrel waving around with every point. Realizing what she was doing, she froze, eyes widened, and then tucked the pistol away.

“Oops,” She said with a half hearted chuckle. “Yeah, sorry about the gun. You really do look just like a guy our parents used to know; I could show ya a picture. And Pa always said gotta defend their honor.”

She was rambling. If this guy didn’t think he crazy from the loaded gun, he might now. A nervous glance asked her sister for assistance.

Dax | Tansu Treicolt ​

 

[Dax]

"Dax! You shot me!"

At this distance, Tansu was essentially shouting directly into Dax's ear. He cringed, snapping out of his awkward topor. It was embarrassing, but he'd hardly ever interacted with the contrary gender his own age, let alone this hitherto unheard-of tangle. Dax shifted, assisting the desperate foreign limb beneath his shoulder blades. "I missed," he corrected penitently, rolling to break away from the pair, legs scrambling to get free.

Gradually the weight of embarrassment lifted, along with the easing of the thumping in his chest he'd only just noticed. Slowly, he picked himself up, reholstering his blaster and fetching the lightsaber from the mulch that had come loose from his belt in the tumble. "When that creature lunged, I thought you were rushing me," he explained, in defense of his nearly murdering Tansu within what amounted to inches.

“It’s kinda cool! Dax, y’reckon you could graze my arm? Make me look like a grizzled vet?”

Dax blinked, recalling the sensation of having one's flesh grazed by condensed, superheated tibanna. "Y-You don't want that." Then again, maybe she did. The more she spoke, the more he became convinced these two really were unhinged... or perhaps it was just Talin.

A moment of silence festered. "You talk a lot." Suddenly afraid they'd try to snatch the part and run, Dax slowly dipped and swiped the actuator from the ground. "You know, you could have just said so about the actuator instead of sticking a gun in my face over some Zaven guy or whatever you said."

BD-9 made a series of annoyed chirps in the background, waddling its way down from the junk pile.

"But, I've been looking for this all day. Finders keepers and all. Looks like you've got some digging to do, sorry... Er, wait, escape pod? What good is a new actuator for a one-use craft?"

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

Talin hauled them both back to their feet, and Tansu spent her time trying to see if she had blood anywhere. All she could smell was burnt hair, acrid and sulphurous. Nothing like burnt flesh. She seemed fine. She was fine. He was right; he did miss.

"Creature? You mean Amos?" The youngest Tricot guffawed and dropped to her haunches, resting her elbows on her knees and pinching her fingers in the direction of the cat — a soundless version of pspsppsps that would encourage the cat back to her arms. "Don't be silly, Dax. Amos is a cat. He's harmless. Maybe you'd get a scratch or two. Nothing worth shootin' at or electrocutin' for." Her face filled with concern, looking at the extra-puffed-up cat. "Aw, poor fella. C'mere Amy."

As Talin explained their predicament, Tansu scooped the cat back up in her arms and checked him over for damage beyond the sparks. She picked up the thinly veiled accusation and immediately inserted: "Someone? C'mon, it was mutual. We talked about it."

Amos seemed physically fine, just agitated and anxious. He was too old for this. Tansu smooched his face to make him feel cozier and cared for again and stood back up with the cat in her arms.

"Zaavik." She piped in to correct Dax. "Traitor to our parents and the Jedi. Y'can see why we'd come in hot about somethin' like that." She shrugged as if the entire exchange had been entirely normal.

"We've been looking all day too!" The youngest child's side was showing up in exasperated befuddlement that someone wasn't just handing something over that she asked for. He'd done the opposite; he'd whooshed it back to himself without a second thought. Even though she was the one with an actuator shaped dent in her lower back. A pinch of petulance flashed across her freckled cheeks as a rosy flush.

"And in different spots than you've been looking for, obviously, or this whole run-in would have happened much earlier. And we've been diggin', really diving into this junkyard— way more than just a lick and a promise - real scavagin'. If there was any other actuator here, we woulda found it and —"

Tansu stopped mid-sentence and cocked her head.

"One-use?" The parroting was slow and dumb. The word didn't make sense. She shook her head, "No, no, Nothin's really one-use. Everything just needs a little elbow grease is all. We'll show you. Wanna see it?"

Her face paled as realization dawned on her.

It was an escape pod from the Chancellor of The Alliance. It was not likely to go unnoticed, and it was not likely to go without some sort of search party trying to hunt it down. Aunt Auteme probably wouldn't chalk it up to a faulty part or malfunction that resulted in a premature release in the Colonies.

Especially when she eventually saw the trail of cheetoh dust in the cargo hold.

"Er, actually…we..probably shouldn't have left it unattended all this time.." Her wide eyes shifted to Talin and she bit her lip, the understanding blooming between them. Had they taken any steps to conceal it whatsoever?

____________________________________________________________
Talin Treicolt | Dax
____________________________________________________________
​

 

[Talin Treicolt]

Horror bloomed like wild flowers with their joint realization. The chancellor’s escape pod. Probably loaded with tracking devices in case Aunty Auteme might ever need to make use of the darned thing. Their parents had surely taken notice of their disappearance by now; it would only be a matter of time before pieces were put together and swarms of marshals came for the runaways.

“Oh no.” Her hands flew to her face in disbelief, then stretched down. “Oh noooo. No. No!”

Panic set in.

“By the force Tansu, we gotta go our stuff and go! We risk it with the locals! Some cowboy will think we’re pretty enough to let us tag along, right?!”

Amos was snatched like an egg from an angry tip tip. Talin began shuffling towards the entrance of the yard, but then spun of her heels, looking to Dax. Desperation was evident in her the lines of her face. He was a better bet than gossams.

“Do you think… you reckon you could give us a ride? We could pay ya - I mean, we don’t have a lot of credits - but if it’s not enough, we could do odd jobs! And I mean, you are walkin’ away with our way off world…”

 

[Dax]

"Don't be silly, Dax. Amos is a cat."

"It's a cat?" Dax's brow furrowed, scrutinizing the creature. Harmless seemed a bold claim for a creature with the confidence to go for the throat. Even now, Dax sensed it had some semblance of smugness in its eyes despite having just been shocked within a hair of unconsciousness. Quickly, the implications of their treatment of the beast would sink in. "And it's... yours?" he asked, cringing slightly as she kissed the 'cat'. Weird.

"Zaavik."

"Whatever."

"Traitor to our parents and the Jedi. Y'can see why we'd come in hot about somethin' like that."

"Not really." According to Talin's brief, ostensibly telling description, they weren't even the same species.

BD-9, waddling out from the receptacle it had landed in, tripped and tumbled down the hill of spare parts. Dax turned and scooped him up gently, brushing off junkyard dust and other waste. The unit twittered an undulating string of binary. Dax whispered an acknowledgment before placing BD-9 back onto his shoulder. The droid might as well have been his 'cat'.

"One-use?"

Dax shrugged. "Might as well be. It's not like it's going anywhere if you manage to get it back in the air. No hyperdrive."

When their collective panic set in, Dax could only stand and watch. Why exactly were they panicking? Did they not know that an escape pod lacked faster-than-light capabilities before he told them? If they knew enough to poke around the junkyard for parts, that surely couldn't be the case. It only dawned on him when he recognized a very particular flavor of desperation in Talin's voice. They were running.

"Some cowboy will think we're pretty enough to let us tag along, right?!"

Please don't ask me, Dax thought, practically praying they'd run off for help elsewhere.

"Do you think… you reckon you could give us a ride?"

Just say no.

Talin was right, though. They were unlikely to find another actuator of similar size.

Just say no.

If they were running, there was no telling what or who from. What if they were in danger?

Just say no.

It wouldn't be right to leave them stranded.

Damn.

Dax grimaced. "Uh, where did you say you were headed, again?"

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

Tansu nodded eagerly, with a hearty, mhmmm accompaniment. Amos was indeed theirs.

"Like your BD-9." She pointed out helpfully. They had droids at home, Frank and Buddy. But they were heavy. Huge. Not made for putting on shoulders. Tansu said as much because she was happy to draw the connection and build a bridge back over that whole two-blasters-pointing-at-each-other incident. "We..used to have droids too. A Bee Bee Eight and an Ell One Three Eight." The sentence ended there, lost in the exchange and flurry of realizations.

First — just how much elbow grease they'd need. "Oh, right." Tansu's face paled at the obvious oversight. All the adrenaline, shock and excitement of the day must have ballooned so hugely in her head that there was no more room for common sense.

Second — the mutual assertion that they needed to get far away from a trackable escape pod of The Chancellor.

Between Tansu and Talin, their faces were all big-eyed and hopeful. Tansu might have even pushed her hands together, clasped in front of her chest, to emphasize the newfound desperation.

Dax's hesitation was understandable.

"Please." She echoed.

Her face brightened tenfold when Dax eked out the ask they needed to hear.

"Not far from here! So close, really. Hardly a hop and a skip and a jump. Then we're out of your hair." A trill of enthusiasm wound its way through her words, and she was close to clutching Dax's hands in celebration. The only thing stopping her was his overbearing grip on the actuator and her fear of him shooting at her again if she went near it.

"Coruscant!"

Just as she spit it out, there was a weird beeping sound coming from somewhere around Talin's hip. A pinging noise they hadn't heard before. And it didn't stop. One slow quiet beep with long drawn intervals between the first and the following.

"What is that? Is that a tracker?"

​

This time, the sense of urgency from being found and dragged back by their ears for an eternity of being grounded was greater than her fear of Dax shooting her again. Her hand jut out and grabbed at Dax's arm, starting to drag him toward Talin and, inevitably, their shuttle.

"We gotta get our stuff!"

____________________________________________________________
Talin Treicolt | Dax
____________________________________________________________
​

 

[Talin Treicolt]

A pit droid raced to meet their exit of the yard, beeping about the part Dax held in his hand. Talin chucked a few credits at him, and continued, with haste. If they payed, could he really change his mind!? She was tempted to spit something about all the help, but chose not to, instead making haste with the others. A hand grabbed the pinging device from her pocket.

“Our comms.” She explained quickly, trying to bring down Tansu’s rising panic. They had to keep level heads. “I synced it with the pod in case we had a rough landin’.”

They always had their twinlink to fall back on, but Talin was doubtful how accurate it’d be to pinging locations. Wasn’t something they’d ever tried, tied at the hip since birth. Maybe they should, once they reached Coruscant. Talin fiddled with the device while maintaining pace.

" Auteme,

It has been years since we've stopped by, forgive me. You know how Kyric is. Too much like his father, unwilling to admit he is good enough of a son to go home to you, but alas, I must be quick.

There are Sith forces here on Jedha. The Will of the Force brought us all here in preparation for something far darker. Another master currently stands beside Kyric on the battlefield.

The message went on and on. The communications system of the escape pod must have been linked in to Auteme’s vessel - she’d be surprised if they didn’t get an angry lecture sooner or later. When finally the droid quieted, a moment of silence fell. Kyric was their brother, first and foremost. She didn’t know who this Inosuke guy was, and it sounded like Auteme wouldn’t be coming to the rescue, they had to help. The excitement and danger was a silver lining. They had come to the core to be heroes! It could be the first of their tales… if Dax would agree.

“That’s our cousin.” The statement was for their newfound friend’s sake. “He only left the farm a few years ago… he needs help. Could we make a pit stop?”

Maybe Dax would be more willing if Kyric sounded like another hopeless country bumpkin. The trio broke the shrub into a small clearing. Smoking, the escape pod rested undisturbed and pitiful.

“I do not think I could live with myself if anything happened to him and we could have helped.” Talin decreed. Drama dripped from her words, and if there would have been a surface to feint across, she would have.

 

[Dax]

"Coruscant!"

"Wh-What?" Dax's voice cracked in disbelief. "Why Coruscant!?" Given his previous assumption about what they were running from, Coruscant should have been the last place they wanted to go. Maybe he was wrong about them, or more likely, about what exactly they were running from. If it couldn't get them on Coruscant, it had to be much worse than some security force. Before he could question it, Tansu had begun dragging him by the arm. There wasn't much resistance, at least not physically, though he sputtered some unintelligible disapproval.

BD-9 followed suit, twittering a series of chimes that indicated an insistence on letting Dax go.

Dax was taken aback even more to hear another BD-unit chirping on their communicator, speaking of Sith and a planet he'd never heard of. It only added further to his confusion. Their cousin was fighting Sith. Were they Jedi? One of them mentioned Jedi earlier. No, blasters were too uncivilized for the Jedi, or so he'd been told. Plus, what kind of Jedi lives on a farm?

"You're crazy!" Dax protested. "My ship is hardly suited for shooting, let alone a warzone."

BD-9 chimed a binary agreement. It calculated their odds of survival out loud. They were very slim.

"What makes you think we can help? Have either of you ever even seen a Sith?" Dax hadn't, but he'd heard stories. They were horrible stories of death and cruelty at the hands of those with unexplainable powers. It didn't sound like anything he wanted to be within ten systems of. "No way."

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

Tansu watched like an ebon hawk while Talin fiddled with the pinging com. For as much as Dax protested verbally, and his little droid too, there was little physical resistance. Which was great, and Tansu categorized that as outright willingness. Even if he was being a little shy about it.

When the message finally played, all binary from Chieftan, Tansu sucked in her cheeks and chewed anxiously. None of that sounded good. That sounded dangerous. It sounded like the stories they'd heard around dinner tables their whole lives.

The same excited trill that pitched through Talin bled through Tansu, and made her nerves bright as stars.

It was a marvellous scene that played out in her mind — red and blue and green clashing on the ground, the smoke-filled skies clouded with dogfights. And they'd careen through the atmosphere, guns a'blazin' and tearing up the ground right to Kyric 's waving self. He'd be so happy to see them. So surprised and so proud!

"Oh, we have to help, Dax, please!"

She stopped dragging him, now they were at the shuttle and placed both hands urgently on the same arm. "Please, please.

Shh, Shh, c'mon BD-9, those aren't the numbers we need to hear. But we can help by being the numbers Kyric needs! He's asking for help, and we've heard him." Her eyes were wide, unable to fully fathom that this was really happening. And the consequence of inaction settled and widened in her chest. What if they were trapped here. What if they didn't respond when someone needed help. The drama her sister felt doubled down inside and bubbled out as stricken claims: "I can't imagine sleeping soundly ever again knowing someone saw danger, asked for help, and I ignored them."

The idea didn't seem far-fetched in the slightest to Tansu. Nor to Talin.

"Your ship will be fine, we promise." The Treicolt promise of safety meant nothing here, but on Concord Dawn if a Treicolt said you were safe, you were safe. Fact.

Conveniently, she ignored the question about a Sith, but answered his other question.

"We can help because it's in our blood to do so, and you look like a stand-up guy, right? You said you've shot someone before. Easy! And that message, they said the Will of The Force. You can't ignore something as ancient and true as The Will of The Force! Plus!" Now she was counting through her fingers, hurriedly building a case to convince the redhead, "We can help because we're already in The Core, you've got a ship, and we're nimble. If au—" she caught herself because she said something too colloquial "—The Chancellor has to get this message, receive it, bring it to the council of the NJO. That's so much time lost!"

Her hands pressed in front of her, palm to palm, pleading.

"Dax, please, we have to. He'd do the same for us and even though he doesn't know you yet, our cousin would absolutely do the same for you I just know it. Pleasepleasepleaseplease."

____________________________________________________________
Talin Treicolt | Dax
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​