Deceased Stars, Brothers & Cultural Memes (Ket)

[Ginnie Dib]

In a room on the Deceased Star was a little girl sniffling for all her might. Ginnie was sniffling for a myriad of reasons: her father had killed the Mand'alor, her brother had disowned her and died in a puff of Sith Logic, her armour wasn't as shiny today as it should have been, her armour wasn't even in the room, the deaf girl was completely incapable of detecting sound without the HUD equipment on her buy'ce, but most important of all the twelve year old Mandalorian was sniffling because her hands were tied and she needed to blow her nose.

Hey, many a child was probably allowed to be frightened when the great and masterful [member="Ket Van-Derveld"] kidnapped them from Mandalore, but Ginnie oh, she wasn't all that frightened or scared. Ket Van-Derveld had been awful nice the first time they met, and the child hadn't quite forgotten the impression he made on the crowds of Roon. Sure he'd kidnapped her and she'd put up a fight! She had to!

How else was Ginnie going to prove her worthiness if she didn't put up fights? Was it her fault if he choked her out? But to take her out of her skin, her beskar'gam!? Was she in the middle of some unforgivable sin?

Or was it the fact she almost crush-gaunted his nethers by mistake? Gulping and hiccuping, the little deaf girl didn't realize the amount of noise she was making trying to pry herself loose from the rope, or from her sniffling nose.

"I have a plan" she thought aloud to herself (thinking she was thinking inside her head), "I'm gonna get loose! I'm gonna find my armour! I'm gonna figure out where we're going! I'm gonna figure it out and and and I'm gonna prove I'm better at fighting! Yeah! That's it! I'm gonna prove that liddle Ginnie Ordo ain't a liddle pushover! I got chops! I can be useful!"

Tug, tug, tug. She grit her teeth and yelled in frustration, shut her eyes and centred her breathing. Then, as she sat in the room, Ginnie rubbed her fingers together and set the ropes on fire.

Fire alarms went off, but the deaf girl didn't hear them, she couldn't. But the ropes began to melt, burn and fall away and right before Ginnie stood up triumphantly, she started coughing in the smoke.

"Mayday! Mayday! GO out, fire!" Using her hands, the twelve year old started trying to put the flames out by smacking them down.

 

[Ket Van-Derveld]

Ket sat there as the The Deceased Star hurtled through hyperspace, alone with his thoughts. Why exactly did he go and kidnap a 12 year old mando girl? There had to be easier ways to obtain Beskar, this was certain. It was the principle of the thing. There was plenty of the Mandalorian iron sitting in the sands of the Dune Sea on Tatooine, where he had faced off with Isley before in that puff of logic, the man had disappeared like smoke fading into the night sky. Yet, why go to Mandalore itself, and kidnap a member of Clan Ordo? Why not find the stuff himself, and pay someone to forge it for him? Because that was the easy way, and Ket never did a damned thing the easy way. Easy was boring. Boring was banal, and Ket just wouldn't have any part of it.

So there he sat, cleaning and servicing his solitary KD-30 Dissuader slugthrower as a way to pass the time of the trip when all of a sudden, the alarms went off. Fire in the cargo hold? Oh holy hell, should have invested in a Force Nullifying field of some sort. Sapphire eyes rolled as he sighed, standing up and making his way down to the cargo hold where the small mando girl was being held. And what a sight he was greeted with. It was almost funny as she tried to slap the flames out. Raising his hand, he used the Force to simply deprive the flame of it's fuel, sucking the air out of the immediate area. As they died down, Ket quickly grabbed Ginnie by the wrist, and dragged her over to the other side of the cargo bay.

He said nothing, as he knew her from his time in the ASA when it was still the Confederacy. He knew well she was deaf, and without her Beskar'gam, speaking aloud was pointless. He grabbed a pair of Durasteel wrist cuffs, and slapped the wrist he held in one side, before twisting her arm around a solid pylon and clapping the other wrist in as well. Locking them down, he looked down on the little girl, and shook his head. Reaching out, he spoke to her through the Force, his voice filling her mind like a snake wrapped around her spinal column.

~And you hoped to accomplish what? Kill us both in the middle of a hyperspace lane? You'd think Clan Ordo would teach you better than that.~


[member="Ginnie Ordo"]

 

[Ginnie Dib]

"Ah! Go out! Ouut!" her slapping hands mashed at the floor, but the flames grew, and grew and then with a soft woosh they ceased to be. Her head slammed up to see [member="Ket Van-Derveld"] raise his hand. The cargo bay was as quiet as the rest of her life, it wasn't often the girl felt the silence as she did then, in the presence of the Master Van-Derveld. The silence was a growing entity creeping in the walls, ceiling, floors. The charred objects smouldered, then joined the still silence.

Her arm grabbed, Ginnie lowered her centre of gravity, going dead-weight like most kids when they didn't want to move. She struggled and fought him, but without her armour and even with it, there was little the child could do. Hands clasped, the Mando'ade immediately began pulling and pushing at the shackles, moving her fingers and wrists in the hopes she was petite enough to slip out.

'How'm I supposed to prove how good I am if I keep getting tied up all the time? What's the fun in kidnapping a Mando . . . hey! My new Daddy's sick okay! I need to prove how good I am and and hunt bounties to fix the family! Mama Rianna ain't leaving Daddy's side and my sisters are busy and who else is gonna make sure the Mandalorians don't hurt Daddy if I'm not there!' Her mental voice was no snake creeping down her spinal column, nor was it considerable in any way, but the oddity of a child with as much slim power as the girl displayed. 'Gotta . . . prove. . . I forgot I could control the fire, okay!? I'm twelve! I'm a kid without her beskar'gam! I can't hear, I can't move away and you're being mean, lemme go! We can negotiate!'

Her inner telepathic voice had none of the deaf-tone of her speaking voice, nor was the girl cognizant of the grunts and noises she made.

 

[Ket Van-Derveld]

~Mama Rianna? Oh that's just too funny. Your 'mama' and I know each other well, little one. For now, we are headed to the Dune Sea on Tatooine. Remnants of your brother await us, and I plan to make use of them. You are the key to that, despite what you think. You shall prove yourself in due time.~

Ket chuckled lightly, turning on his heel and heading back to the cockpit. The klaxons went off, as a computer voice altered him to their status. "Tatooine System in sensor range. Reversion in t-minus 5 minutes." Ket swiftly made his way into the pilot's seat of the Star, and tapped on the controls. Soon enough, the twin suns would gleam into the cockpit as the streaks of light would give way to the pinpoints of distant stars and the desert world came into view. Taking manual control, he guided the ship down into the atmosphere, the 'wings' twisting mechanically into their atmospheric flight configuration.


[member="Ginnie Ordo"]

 

[Ginnie Dib]

"You know Momma? I need my armour." The girl said in her poorly enunciated deaf-tone. She stopped struggling and pulled up to her tip-toes. 'Isley? You kidnapped me to grab Isley's armour? The stuff you broke off him in that duel he was sore about?'

Her inner Mando cringed. Beskar. [member="Ket Van-Derveld"] wanted the Mandalorian Black Iron for himself. Ginnie's hands wrapped around the pipe, her fingers twitched as the tiny-for-her-age child felt a wellspring of tempestuous bitterness, rage. Isley. Ket took Ginnie's sore spot and stomped on it, and the man probably didn't know. But he would now. Jasper [member="Ordo"]'s littlest daughter was a hot spike of anger and hurt. Her teeth grit. The metal pillar he chained her too began to change colour under the heat of her palms.

Isley Verd. 'Dar'manda' the girl's inner voice was crimson-clear and laced with a horrible pain for a child to bear. Her eyes stung as she looked up at Ket Van-Derveld, 'I'll help you. Please give me my armour. Master Van-Derveld!' She watched him go, but didn't know why. "I need my armour!"

Oh the heart and mind of a child: focussed inward, incapable of larger vision. Ginnie clung to the pillar and the metal began to slowly melt and leak away.

 

[Ket Van-Derveld]

Once again the klaxons sounded. This time, the Sith Lord was well karking mad. Stepping with purpose, he walked back into the cargo hold to see the pylon Ginnie was latched to become superheated and begin to melt. Audibly, he yelled "Force karking dammit!" and walked over to the little girl, and with a balled fist, cold-cocked her right in the temple, knocking her into the sweet oblivion of unconsciousness. "Stop destroying my ship, you little bastard." he muttered as he ventured back to the cockpit.

Sliding himself back down into the pilot's seat, he throttled back on the sub-light engines as they entered the atmosphere of Tatooine, and set the ship down with a light thud a fair few klicks from Mos Espa, in the outskirts of the Dune Sea. Shutting the ship's main power down, he walked back toward his personal quarters, gearing himself up. He strapped his gauntlets on, left, then the right. He picked up a saber hilt, and slid it into place within the gauntlet until he heard the click. Once more for the other. His slugthrower? Holsted and snapped secure upon his right thigh. He donned his long terentatek leather coat and made sure he grabbed a spare clip of the acid-filled hollow slugs just in case. Making his way back to where ginnie was laying helpless, he picked her up, and slung her over his shoulder.

Moving to the small speederbike bay he'd fabricated within the Star's main cargo hold, he mounted one of the speeder bikes, and powered it up. The hangar door hissed a moment before dropping into the sand, the harsh light of the twin suns filling the bay quickly. And as he held Ginnie tightly, he cracked back on the throttle, and the speederbike took off into the sand dunes.


[member="Ginnie Ordo"]

 

[Ginnie Dib]

The metal had been squishing from her fingers, when out of nowhere the girl felt a planet collide with her temple. Ginnie flopped over cold and hard on the ground, her body snapping into a slide a few feet from the post as the shackles melted off her wrists and stuck to the pole.

How had the girl melted through durasteel with her bare hands?

She groaned and shifted on [member="Ket Van-Derveld"]'s shoulder as he walked to his speeder bike, but the girl did not wake. The rustle of the fast-paced wind did that well enough once they got going. Ginnie stirred again, this time both her hands unfurling from fists and grazing Ket's back through his coat. "Uurrhhhhhh"

What had happened? Ginnie's head shook from side to side as she cleared the dust voorpahs and hungry Ropos eating her brain. Eyes sliding open, she saw the back end of a speeder bike and whips of tan veering backward at . . . well, an alarming speed. Her eyes shut. She shifted, but the girl couldn't get comfy. This wasn't her bed! Why did it feel like there was an iron bar wrapped around her tummy?

Wait. . . "AUGH!!!" The child screeched and spastically kicked all her limbs out at once. "Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!" She was on a speeder bike! On Tatooine! Without her armour. "I'm gonna diiiiiiieeeeee! I'm gonna die! I'm gonna die! I'll fix it! I'll fix it! I'll clean up the ash and the fire damage, promise please don't feed me to something big and wooly I'll be good I promise! Aaahahahahaaaauuuggghhh! I'm sooooooorrryyy! Don't throw me overboard Mister! I can change! I can muck the metal back on that pillar I promise! You . . . don't . . . have to . . . kill. . . a KID!"

Ginnie scrambled to hug her little arms and legs around Ket's chest and neck, clinging with all the terrified force-powered strength in her petite little body. Her brown eyes were pushed wide as saucers, 'I'm gonna get eaten by the wind! Is my skin still on? IS . . . MY SKIN . . . STILL ON!? Where's my armour? Wh-I'm outside! I promise I'll get you Beskar! Pleeheheheeeaaase don't kill me'

The child pushed her face into Ket's shoulder and hung on for her tiny, dear life. Even in the face of Ket Van-Derveld's wrath, the child knew one protection from the biggest, scariest world outside: clinging to the biggest, strongest adult she could find. Her entire body shook, her hands clasped around Ket's neck like a kid getting a Yoda back ride. 'I'll make it better don't kill me Mister Ket. I'm gonna fall out and turn into Ginnie soup. A puddle in the desert, I'm gonna fall off! I'm gonna fall off. Don't let me fall off the speeder bike. Pleeeaaaassse.'

 

[Ket Van-Derveld]

As the hot air of the deserts whipped through their hair, Ket let up on the throttle a bit as Ginnie woke, going completely ape-poodoo. Ket grabbed her by the back of the neck, and forcibly lifted her up and over him, breaking her grip upon him in the process. He then sat her down in front of him, facing forward on the speederbike, placing her hands on the underside of the handlebars. His voice called out to her through the Force once more. "Calm yourself, child. I've no intention of hurting you badly. We are headed to the site where I flattened your brother's ego to a thin paste."

And with that, he cracked back on the throttle once more, letting the speederbike achieve it's top speed. They'd be there within the next few minutes or so.

[member="Ginnie Ordo"]

 

[Ginnie Dib]

The desert continued to whizz by in its arid and dangerous fashion as Ginnie shut her eyes to it. Deaf and now dark, the world was a lot less terrifying. Her arms wrapped around [member="Ket Van-Derveld"]'s neck were her only contact with the outside world, the tactile sensation of his body heat, clothes and skin all she had to tell her that he wouldn't let her fall. As he grabbed the back of her jumpsuit, Ginnie curled her arms and legs toward her chest, if he tossed her maybe she could roll! Yes! Roll!

Other than the voice in her brain, her senses were the tumultuous passage of land under the speeder bike. She curled her knees up on the saddle, holding onto the handlebars with a singular desire not to fall down. Pinned between Ket's massive, legendary arms, the child felt at least a little like the man had become a seatbelt.

Dressed only in her beskarweave jumpsuit, Ginnie kept flinching as things veered by but as she felt the security of being surrounded by the father-of-however-many, Ginnie slowly started to unfurl. She sat higher instead of hunched, turned her head to see the world go by around her and her fingers lost their light-knuckled grab to look comfortable enough. A timid sort of smirk began to open up on her face and her mind settled.

Ginnie Ordo was driving on a Speeder bike in a warm place and was going to see something really cool. Mister Ket said he wasn't going to hurt her badly and now that the event wasn't as death-defying she could even go home with the story of 'I got to ride on the front of a speeder bike. Daddy [member="Ordo"] can I have one?'. 'We're gonna go to where you broke [member="Isley Verd"]'s armour? I get to find bits of beskar? And I get to see where you beat up Isley? I get to see it, really? That's cool! . . . but I'm kinda useless unless you get me back to my Forge and it's on. . ah! It's a secret. What do you expect me to do like this? I can't hear a darn thing without my helmet. I got no scanners to search for metal, I got no crush gaunts to grip onto things all strong. I'm just a tiny deaf runt.'