Private Backwater

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra cracked into a massive grin, perking in the chair. “Oh I can? Thank you!” And she tossed herself into his arms, giving him a very large, tight hug.

Definitely no padding to be felt.


And with a final wave of pheromones came a bold yet subtle attempt. The force around him shimmered and shifted, picking up where the pheromones left off. Calm… trust…

You can trust her. You’re inclined to protect.

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

"I don't trust you," he said in warning. His actions, however, seemed to betray his words.

Trextan put a few dull grey coins on the table. Old Eriadu credits. Not the most valuable but they were accepted almost everywhere.

"I have a repulsor cart to take me out to the village. Can't land a shuttle there. You can help me ask around."


Trextan decided that he would see the girl there safely. Protect her if she needed it.

 

[Kyra Perl]

“Yes sir,” she chirped, giving him a sassing wink as she stood. She grabbed her pack out from under her chair, slinging it easily over her back. She gave him a look and a shrug that said, ‘this is it, lets go.’ , shrugging past him as she went.

“So where are you from, anyway?” She asked once they broke fresh air. He would be free of her built up pheromones then. Free of all the little tricks she used out get here. Slowly her guard seemed to be dropping, her emotions starting to buzz faintly off her like an aura.

Innocent. Excitable. At ease.

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

Trextan shook his head and took a slow breath of cool air as they stepped outside. Perhaps it was the hot stuffy air in the small cantina, but he felt just a little off.

He strode past her and stepped up into the back of the repulsor cart. There was a rusted old droid at the front that had the coordinates. This thing wasn't going to get there fast, but the goods being taken out the settlement made a fairly comfortable arrangement in the back of the truck for Trextan to lounge on.

"Coruscant, originally," he replied. That only narrowed it down to a few hundred billion people.

He pointed to her bag as the cart set off. "So these bandits left you with something then? Sure you don't want me to go deal with them first?"

 

[Kyra Perl]

“Oh that? No that’s okay.” She leveled her earlier grin at him, withholding the comment that it had been a lie, oh though she did so yearn to boast it to him.

“I got more.” She patted her bag, the grin turning cheeky as she kicked back into his cart. She kicked up her feet, her jacket cracking open to reveal a comfortable tee underneath.

She continued to eye him in that way of hers- half amused, half curious. Her unanswered questions but at her lips. And who was she to hold them back?

“So how’d you get here? Why do you care about these lizard slavers? You on a mission?” She asked bluntly.

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

"It's not a mission," he replied quietly. That earlier bluster was gone. They had a long and tedious journey ahead.

Trextan tried not to draw any attention to the way he picked up his own back and laid it over his lap. After effect of the pheromones l.

"Just picked up a faint distress, probably from a jury rigged subspace transmitter. I assume you've crossed this lot if you know they are slavers?" he asked Kyra. The whole conversation that led to her coming along seemed a little fuzzy.

 

[Kyra Perl]

"I've only been tracking them halfway across the Galaxy," Kyra grumbled. She barely seemed to notice him anymore, the girl's attention picking to the belongings she sat around. She pulled at them, curiously peeking into bags and what not.

"How are you receiving stuff like this? You alone? Got a ship?" Where was his saber. Ten bucks he had one. She glanced over to him, eyeing his lap.

Saber?

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

Why was she staring at his lap??

Trextan shifted the bag and looked somewhere else. The sled was hovering along at barely beyond jogging pace. The trees were tall and wiry here. He kept spotting vines wrapped around them, occasionally sprouting bright yellow flowers and little red fruit pods.

"Right now I'm alone," he replied. "Happened to be close by. Someone else might have got the message too. What do you know about them?"

 

[Kyra Perl]

Her eyes narrowed, watching him squirm. Found the saber. ...Noted!

"Well," she started. "I know they are slavers. I know they are lizard people. I know they tried to hit a wookie village on Kashyyyk a few months ago. I know I stopped them." She rubbed at her shoulder, her brows furrowed as she stared off through the trees.

"And I know a bunch of Mando's came and broke them out of escort," she concluded at all once, her attention snapping back to Trextan, whose name is a little too annoying to spell.

"I don't know why. Or by who. But if what you say is true, these guys sound just like the ones back on Kashyyyk. I wonder if they got ahold of another ship..." She mused.

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

Trextan, whose name was definitely easier than trandoshan, made a thoughtful sound as they wound through the trees. This was apparently a road around here. A path wide enough for the repulsor sled and about nothing else.

"If they are here then they are keeping a low profile," he replied. "This is the ass end of nowhere and they've found the darkest part.

"Mandalorian are not cheap. If someone broke them out then they had to have a good reason. And they would also need a pretty good reason to hide out here. A bunch of jedi looking for you would probably be enough."

 

[Kyra Perl]

"Well, it's not a bunch. Just me," Kyra concluded forlornly, not much faith given to her own skills when it counted. The girl was unwitting to her accidental admittance to what she was.

Not a bunch of jedi. Just one. So a jedi then, to those that had listened well enough.

"Hey.... do you have a ship of your own?" Her eyes swam with a a brewing idea, the girl giving him the most peculiar of looks. Up until this point she had been winging this whole affair, but now...

Well if he had the gear...

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

"Silver people..." he repeated under her breath. This Jedi had a strange way with words. As flirtatious as the stories of the Silvers too. At least he had acted with dignity and hadn't succumbed to it at all, he told himself.

"I have a ship, though it isn't exciting," he replied. There were many ways of defining exciting. For instance the ship was not exciting to look at it. It was exciting however, when it started to fall apart mid flight.

Trextan narrowed his eyes suddenly. The Force rippled. Kyra would feel intent towards them if she had stretched out her sense. He turned his head towards the woods on her side of the cart.

"Push yourself down into the cart slowly," Trextan murmured. "Get your head down.."

 

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra blinked and turned to look around.


Oops.

Her eyes wide, she back peddled and fussed at the tag at the back of her shirt. Before slowly sliding down, her clothing inching up her body in protest of the motion. She felt it too.

"Whatisit?" She murmured sharply, her fingers reaching clumsily for a saber at her side. Her nostrils flared as she took deep breaths. And with more effort than she usually mustered, she closed her eyes and reached out with her senses, trying to pick up the details of a threat nearby.

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

"I don't know yet," Trextan replied. "Just keep your head down."

Without a word he rolled over the edge of the sled. There was a soft thud as he hit the ground but after that she would neither see or hear any sign of the young jedi.

Just ahead of them, on her side of the road waited two of Kyra's old friends. A pair of trandoshan were waiting in the woods, waiting to steal the supplies from the defenceless droid.

A flash of red light and a blaster bolt struck the side of the sled on the other side from Kyra's head. Another bolt struck the droid at the front of the sled, which slowed to a halt.

 

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra squeaked into her palm as the shots zinged by her, her vision swarming as a sharp wave of panic seized her. Not-not again. She had... to get... past this... eventually.

She heaved for a breath, fighting through the fear that rampaged her. Slowly, carefully... she turned onto her stomach and peered through the hole the blaster had left in the sled. Her stomach tossed as she saw them, her vision swimming as unwelcomed memories bubbled up.

That wookie should have never died.

Her fingers gripped at her saber, sticky and damp as she watched the legs of the trandoshen move in.

Almost... closer...

Her fingers squeezed, thumb hovering over the button.

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

There was a dull thud. The trandoshan collapsed to his knees and fell to the ground just short of the sled.

Trextan didn't even draw his saber. Three of the trandoshan had been advancing towards the sled, the first knocked out cold already. They had marched forward in a tight wedge, which had been a mistake.

The next one swung a heavy rifle around which his artificial hand clamped down on and crushed. The third was thrown back until he hit a tree with a powerful telekentic wave.

Trextan stepped in close, delivering a punch to the sternum with his artificial arm and then holding the last trandoshan in place with the Force. It had all taken just three heartbeats.

"Kyra, is this the kind of lizard person?"

The trandoshan hissed something at Trextan.

"No, I know 'lizard person' isn't politically correct but she wasn't very specific."

It hissed something else in trandoshan.

"Fine, fine. Kyra he wants me to ask: is his species the type of reptilian species which you were alluding to?"

 

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra slowly sat up, her hair askew and saber hanging limply at her side. Her mouth dropped, the girl gaping at the mess of lizard people Trextan had subdued in, what? Two seconds?

Her and Acaadi were newbs. Plebs. Put to shame. "How..."

She broke past her shock then, the lizard person staring her down from the place it was held. Oh yes. It recognized her. It wordlessly hissed, a feat which sent her light saber hissing open.

A gold light washed over the sled, the girl holding it steady before her. Pure fury cut through her features one moment, match by a fear and then pure disorientation. See she hadn't plan on actually having them pinned down like this. Some part of her never truly expected this plan to come through. But with push come to shove, what was she to do?

She had been telling herself she was here to bring them back for justice, but she no longer trusted that justice would stick. She needed to stop them now. Before they could hurt again.

They was no saying how many more lives they'd affect if their little friends broke them out again.

She tightened her grip on her saber, swallowing hard.

"That's them." She jumped out of the sled, walking up to Trextan's side.

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

"Just three of them then?" he asked Kyra. Unfortunately it wasn't, but it was a simple assumption to make. He hadn't heard any word of how many trandoshan were attacking the village.

These three had broken off from the rest to watch the road, hoping to pick off the sled carrying the supplies.

"There's no need for the lightsaber, I've got this one held tight."

 

[Kyra Perl]

"No. There were five," she told him, the saber not lowering. "...Probably more now that they've found friends." She stared down the lizard person, her fist shaking in held back emotions. Her rage frightened her, if she was being honest. For the first time she recognized what it meant, and where it had led her before.

She didn't know what to do. Who to trust. How not be angry at them for all the lives they had changed.

The indecision radiated off her, but one thing became clear.

"We need the others." Her saber whipped down, hissing as it flickered out of sight. She pressed her lips into a thin line, looking to Tristan. "Make him spill his guts. Or I will."

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

"Woah there," went Trextan. Where was the zeltron girl making doe eyes to get her way. This anger was hot, personal. He knew first hand that it was the kind of anger that was hard to quell. The kind that could get out of hand quickly.

The trandoshan hissed at him again.

"No I'm not going to let her kill you. But you're not getting out of the one either. Where are the other slavers?"

Another angry reply.

"He says they're the only ones here..." Trextan narrowed his gaze. "But he's lying. They have a camp a few miles from the settlement. Almost twenty of them. Kyra would you mind seeing if there's anything in the sled or on the others to bind these three?"