Do You Wanna Build A Spacelane? (Brat Pack)

[Laura Na'Varro]

This plan just kept on getting better and better. Laura had always had that spark of curiosity that made her want to explore brave new worlds and expand frontiers. She'd just never had the opportunity yet. Now she finally had a group of friends she felt somewhat comfortable with, all of whom were extremely capable youngsters. Well, between them, they had several Force Gods for parents and more still for teachers. They all had access to resources beyond their years, and powers beyond that of normal children. If any group of kids could actually set up a proper secret base of operations out there, it was these ones. Goonies in space, they certainly were not.

"We need at least one habitable world nearby." Laura sounded pretty relaxed, but she would be obstinate about this if pressed. "Asteroid bases get boring real quick. We need somewhere to explore that's no more than a couple of hours flight from home."

Gone was the shy, skittish girl they'd met at the start. The young Na'Varro was starting to find her feet socially.

 

[Kaili Talith]

Kaili’s frustration grew. All this talk got them nowhere yet amidst the shimmer and chimes of people going off on tangents she could swear she heard the wisdom of [member="Mara D'Lessio Merrill"] call out for a visit to a nearby chop shop and mention of Instinctive Astrogation. Eyebrows furrowed, anger suppressed the youngest Talith nodded.

“I like that idea, Mara.” Kaili got out of her seat. “Should we let them go on or should we go do something that actually helps us get somewhere with this project? Because I would much rather actually start doing things than sit around here and just talk about it.”

Planning sucked, it was just a fact, it really sucked. Kaili looked to Laura and tilted her head as if she should come along. Those hyperable probes weren’t gonna purchase themselves out of that shop. The sooner the kids got to taking action, the sooner Kaili would be somewhere else that wasn’t Ord Mantell and the sooner she wasn’t on Ord Mantell the happier everyone else would be lest she started going ‘So when can we leave this place?’ on a every-ten-minute basis.

“Come on, I just really don’t want to be here.” It was a sneak peek at what alternate reality they could be living. “I just really, really want to get out of here.”

“Please.”

[member="Mara D'Lessio Merrill"] / [member="Laura Na'Varro"]​

 

[Mara D'Lessio Merrill]

"Fiiiine, let's get outta here. I'm going, anyway, and whoever wants a ride can come with me."

***​

​

A couple hours of wheedling, whining, and binary load lifters got a dozen hypercapable probes into the Tachyon's hangar. Other probes got loaded into [member="Aela Talith"]'s ship. At some point in there, Mara washed her hands. Leftover barbecue sauce sluiced away, revealing a permanent coating of engine grease and other starship grime, worked so deeply into her skin that no amount of scrubbing would get it out.

"Alright," she said. The Pack had gathered in the Tachyon's hangar among the drones, apart from the kids aboard Aela's ship; for them, there was an open comm link. "I've got the probes all set up for you to input a hyperroute. The interface is super intuitive from this point, so all you gotta do is get meditationy and pick a route. I'll check over your routes when you're done, then we launch and see what happens." She'd talked them through the basics of instinctive astrogation, and had probably gone overboard on the history and theory of it, but hey -- maybe a couple of'em would even get the hang of this long-term. Then she'd have company that could keep up with her, maybe. "Now, these probes only have a thousand-light-year range, so don't pick any coordinates farther than that."

 

[Hira Mitsae]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px][member="Ibaris Varanin-Jacobs"] | [member="Liam Quez "]| [member="Mira Gyndar"][/SIZE]​

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]~~~[/SIZE]​

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]They were on board the Peregrine and John was feeling remarkably sane again. He still wasn’t exactly sure what had happened prior to this, how he had popped up on a crash site, but in the grand scheme of things the boy supposed it could have been worse. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]Could have died, could have broken something more than the spare pen in his backpack.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]In the end he decided to travel together with this… ‘Brat Pack’, they seemed to have a good thing going here and that was the one thing he still remembered. His reason for leaving Zeltros was to find a little bit more excitement, and these guys were getting all the excitement in the world.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]If you believed their stories.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]“So… his name is really Adas?” John asked with some curiosity. “Pretty cool name.” [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]He gave Ibaris a little smile. [/SIZE]

 

[Micah Talith]

Normally Micah would be traveling with his sisters. Normally.

However, the idea of having Mara pilot and learning some way to counter that curse that plagued them all -- and given him a rather aggravating time a few years back over Crina -- meant that he wanted to see it in the flesh.

If Mara could at least give him some measure of understanding or ah hah moment, all the better.

Not to mentions the snacks she had in hand were by far better than what could be found on the Rising Tide.

Like the spicy Togruta tuber chips!

So, leaning against one of the drones in the hanger, he chomped down -- ever hungry this one -- and kept an ear open for what Mara was saying.

 

[Aela Talith]

Aela sat on her ship the Rising Tide, there was a smile on her face, and a look of delight as the bridge of the cruiser slowly began to fill out.

Felix would pilot it, but the AI systems on the Rising Tide would do the rest. The sail ship was huge, big enough to carry the entire brat pack and more. That was why most of the supplies had simply been loaded onto the Tide instead of spread onto the other ships, it made more economical sense that way, especially since she wouldn't have to pay for fuel.

The benefit of a sail ship.

With the same Stoic look returning to her face Aela slowly sat herself down in the captains chair. She wiggled her legs for a moment then pressed the key on her armchair, opening the comm-line to Mara's ship so that she could listen to the instructions.

This would be fun.

 

[Hylocereus]

Hylo rose up out of the bed, Mara’s bed, with wide arms. It was a good nap. Honestly it hadn’t been hard to convince the girl that he needed to photosynthesize and to get some privacy. He’d chosen her bed, it was the most comfortable and something about it felt… right. Yup it was a good morning for Hylo. Sure Mara was grumpy about the whole ordeal, but that was to be expected.

Sliding in next to Micah during the lecture the youth yawned as he listened to Mara talk about hyperspace and routs and travel. It was all sciency, but not like… biology, that good science. He was at a bit of a loss. Bringing up the display he started to contemplate what Mara had said. Instinct. Go on instinct.He looked at the stars and picked his first route. No, he’d thought about it, look at the pretty flower pattern he’d made.

Starting up a starmap and thought really hard, he thought so hard a sprout started to form before he quelled it’s developement. No that wasn’t working… But there was something else. Hylo thought about it for a minute really concentrating and emptying himself of thought until finally he said, “PLANTS!” declaring it for the whole world and pointing to a blank spot on the chart. Quickly he plugged in the probes Hyperspace route to reach that destination. He bit his lower lip and put a seed down into a pot he brought with him and grew a little fruit tree. Picking up a bright red fruit he cleaned it on his shirt. “Anyone want something to healthy to eat? They’re sweeet….”

 

[Liam Quez]

Pulling on my sunglasses I sat in the cockpit of the Peregrine. Reaching over I grabbed one of the lolipop candies I hid from Ibaris. Force knew that if she knew I had these they would be gone in 2.7 seconds. The girl was a trash bin for candies. Before we had left, I offered [member="Mira Gyndar"] a ride on the Peregrine despite the death glare that Ibaris had given the girl. I stuck the candy into my mouth and looked in one of the mirrors that looked back into the cabin where the ones that decided to come along hung out. There was this boy, I didn't know his name just yet but he caught my attention as he spoke to Ibaris. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and for some reason I wanted to throw something at him. Shaking it off, I felt the engine come alive in the old ship.

Seeing that Mira had taken up the offer to join, I nodded my head towards her and gave her that grin I reserved for her. The lolipop stuck out of my mouth as I lifted the ship up. Taking off after the other two ships, I started to sing getting into the rhythm of the machine I piloted.

"IIIII REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY LICK YOU" I sang through the lolipop in my mouth, not realizing that the word 'like' didn't come out right. Still, I sang loudly. " AND I WANT YOU. DO YOU WANT ME? DO YOU WANT ME TOOOOO" The ship caught up to the others and I sang loudly one more verse through the lolipop. "I REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY LIIIICK YOU"

I laughed and ran my free hand through my hair doing my best to look like a professional pilot here. I got ladies to impress.


[member="Ibaris Varanin-Jacobs"] [member="John Hunt"]

 

[Kaili Talith]

No words could describe exactly how intently the young little girl listened to Mara’s lesson about instinctive astrogation. Eyebrows furrowed for each mental note made and despite the fact that a lot of it seemed to include a repetition of the words ‘get all meditationy and focused and stuff’ it was still a good lesson and exercise in patience.

The team had split up in three with the Notorious Four all sharing a ship with one another. Meanwhile Kai had taken the opportunity to get on-board with Mara. It felt a bit weird to not be on the ship that the Taliths had arrived in, but that didn’t really matter when the destination was the same for all ships involved.

The probe lay in front of her. This was it.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. It was about the force and going with your gut. Well her gut said that if the traced around like this, took a turn here and...

Kaili opened her eyes to look at the course. Overzealousness and a route that well beyond what they had set their limit to. With the shake of her head she closed her eyes and tried again...

 

[Mara D'Lessio Merrill]

[member="John Hunt"] [member="Kaili Talith"] [member="Liam"] Quez @Hylocereus @Aela Talith [member="Micah Talith"]

Mara's lecture on instinctive astrogation ran down, and transitioned into 'how to do the thing.' Meditation instructions, basically. Bit by bit, the probe calibrations began to come in as various Brats followed the instructions and picked routes by instinct. Using remote probes, without their own lives at stake, the instinctive part of instinctive astrogation would be less effective -- but if they could learn to do this, they could learn to blind jump in an emergency.

"All right, we've got the first programmed probes. Sending them out now."

A handful of little hypercapable spears clunked out of the cargo holds and accelerated in all directions. She watched on the hyperspace sensors as the probes flicked away -- one light-year, two, ten, fifty. She'd checked the coordinates against comprehensive charts, and had some idea of what would happen, but...

"Telemetry's coming back. We've lost...two probes. Bounced too close to a quasar. Almost made it, though. One of you found the planet Anobis, so that's something. And we've got a couple potentials -- star systems that nobody knows much about. Planets that might be terrestrial. Send out your probes if you haven't already, and let's see if there's more around that's interesting."

 

[Micah Talith]

Micah was focused.

It was a rare thing indeed, but when it dealt with an area that he knew he lacked in, the intensity of his concentration would spike while the normal carefree attitude would wane.

There were even three frown lines on his forehead, signifying just how much he was mulling this over. Yes, let us cheer for a little bit of peace and quiet from the Micah front.

His probe would be sent out a little bit later than the rest, he wanted to fully comprehend how it worked, what sort of telemetry he was going for and just where he wanted to investigate. Plus, if he was being honest, he was nervous about it. The last time he tried to mess with astrogation it ended up with them over Carida.

Not the best day of his life.

Finally he released it. Like a kid playing hologames with the Force, so started Micah's first attempt at what his gut instincts gave him in coordinates.

 

[The End Narrator]

Mira leaned back in her seat and chuckled softly as [member="Liam Quez "]began to sing – in quite an offbeat tune and perhaps even offkey? She’d open the ancient diary as the ship lifted off and begin reading, bringing her feet up to proper them up on the edge of Liam’s seat. She’d skim through a few lines as he continued to get louder and louder it seemed. She’d let off a soft chuckle and shake her head, closing the book on a single index finger. Her free hand would come to rest ontop of the book in her lap as she watched him dance in his own seat to the song in his mind.

She’d tilt her head in slight amusement and admiration – he was adorable, she had to admit. Something about that farmboy that made her feel different than others did. She couldn’t quite explain it, she was peaceful and able to focus on her studies and the Force more than in solitude. Was this the forbidden attachment her mother had spoke of? Her smile would fade into a slight frown as she brought her boots down from off his chair – rotating her own chair to face away from him.

What if something happened to him?

Then, they’d hit her – like starship crashing from the atmosphere into the lands below. A vision within the depths of the Force that caused her to stop in her tracks and drop the ancient diary from her grasp. She could feel despair, pain and an overwhelming fear in her heart – her eyes would water up as she stared off into space, the vision flashing through her mind. If not but for a moment in reality, to her, it felt like an eternity.

It was an older version of herself, standing before someone she loved deeply but they weren’t there for her like they used to be? It was clouded and raw with emotions. She cried out to him, her voice desperate for him to understand. “You’re going down a path I can’t follow…” Tears would stream down her face as she heard words inauidable come from his mouth causing her to shake her head and gulp what felt like a mouthful of sand. “No, because I don’t know who you are anymore, and because of the things you’ve done!” She’d exclaim. Then, it would be as if that same sand were to catch in her throat – choking her, causing her to gasp for air, words not able to escape her mouth as she reached out towards him.

Spoiler

“N…o” She’d beg. “Please…”

Then reality would strike in the form of a jolt of the ship as it broke atmosphere and into space causing her to stumble forward and catch one of the edges of the panel with a hand – gasping for air. She’d refuse to look at Liam, simply reaching down to grab the ancient diary and running out of the cockpit without another word – she needed to find the engine room in this damned ship or somewhere quiet. Never had she experienced something like that before and she didn’t have anyone she could consult, not right now anyways.

 

[Aela Talith]

As was expected, Aela didn't do so well.

She didn't like to admit it, she didn't like to experience it, but the truth was there were some things that she truly was not good at. Maybe it was because her skills lay in the physical, or maybe it was because her mind was simply more bent to reality than to the flowing paths of the force, Aela didn't know.

Yet when the others had sent forth their probes, when they had all found their coordinates and done as Mara had told them. Aela was still sitting in the middle of her room on the Rising Tide with a perplexed and somewhat disappointed look on her face.

She frowned slightly, disappointed in her failure. Though she realized that she wasn't going to be capable of everything.

As such Aela simply decided to play to her strengths. She stood, moving in that fluid, almost liquid, way and sauntered over to her bookshelf. From it she drew an ancient novel. Leather bound and appearing as though it had seen better centuries. She opened it, then drew her finger across the pages until she found what she was looking for.

A list of coordinates, ancient and likely forgotten.

Her lips turned up into a smile. Perhaps she could participate after all.

 

[Hylocereus]

To say that Hylo was happy would be a bit of an understatement. Hylo was elated. He resisted the urge to jump up and down waiting to hear about his probes journey. What had it seen? Did it find anything? What if he didn’t find anything? Well at least he helped he supposed. Fidgeting he waited in his seat for Mara to come back with the data.

Then Mara came back with the data. He found something! “Yay!” Hylo said jumping into the air before settling down. “I found Anobis…” He quickly smoothed out his clothing and looked back at the starmap. He wanted to find something else! Maybe he was actually good at something besides planting trees. “Mara I found Anobis, there are plants on Anobis.” That was what he needed to do. He needed to find plants. He stared at the probe again and brought up it’s display and started to randomly press buttons again. Plants, he needed to find more plants. “There,” he said finally letting loose another probe. “Plants!”

The probe went out but was a dud. No plants. A frown followed as Hylo tried again… “Here,” he said hitting in another set of coordinance. “This is fun Mara, but when do we get to go and explore things?”

 

[Laura Na'Varro]

Force Sense was an ability that Laura had an innate knack for. She could sense the location of organics, their emotions, their dispositions ... sometimes, when they were force sensitive, whether they followed the light or the dark. She was starting to translate that to battle as well, predicting strikes before her opponent would even start moving. As knacks went, it was one of the more useful ones to have. So with instinctive astrogation, well ... Laura hoped to do pretty well at it.

On the bridge of the Peregrine, she spent a long time simply frowning at the large holodisplay. She knew the feeling of what she wanted, that deadset sureness. She just had to find a star that matched that feeling. 'In tune' was a way one could describe the young Na'Varro that was not the same as her father. Eventually, she settled on a set of coordinates that felt right. A strange, unorthodox way to operate to be sure, but that was the way she felt most comfortable. So she programmed the coordinates into her first probe.

Then she pressed a button, and the probe went forth.

[member="Mara D'Lessio Merrill"]

 

[Liam Quez]

I continued to sing, Mira had found a place near me and I felt comfortable. At least here her and Ibby wouldn’t argue. Pushing a few known buttons I checked the gauges and everything came back normal, this old bird that the Princess’ parents gave her knew how to move and keep up with anything new. I would kill for a ship like this, but then I think I wouldn’t have as much fun without having the Princess to argue with and I could never convince Mira to come aboard a ship alone with me. I wanted to laugh out loud, but the sound of Bookworm’s book falling to the ground scared me. Looking at her she seemed lost and then suddenly returned from whatever she had gotten caught up.

“Mira?”

Reaching out for her, she slipped through my hold and continued to move away frantic. I knew this wasn’t something good, turning towards the console I pushed a few more buttons putting the ship into autopilot, if anything I would be able to find the others if I needed to, but right now I needed to check on her. Pushing out of the pilot seat I looked at Ibaris. “Things are fine and we’re following the others dont freak out Princess I need to take care of something.” The ship was small and it was easy to find where Mira had run off to. I jogged and quickly caught up to her before she was able to slip away to heaven’s knew where. Pulling her towards me, I looked at her. “Hey what happened back there? Are you okay?”


[member="Mira Gyndar"] [member="Ibaris Varanin-Jacobs"]

 

[Ibaris Varanin]

She'd been doing the probe thing, trying out that instinctive astrogation that Mara had yammered on about. That girl seemed to know a lot, compared to her - most of her life she'd been kept safe, until the netherworld of the Force infringed on their lives, until the Force freaked out for a while, until her uncle was gone. Her hand grasped the small cube on a chain around her neck, her eyes closing as she sighed. It wasn't supposed to be like this, but it was what it was, and she adapted. She moved on, as hard as it could be at times. There, the guilt crept in. The way she treated... words broke her out of her thoughts, broke her focus, and she was quickly primed to needle Liam for it. But it wasn't [member="Liam Quez "].

"Hm?" She blinked, "Oh? Oh, yeah. He's a great dog. Been with me since I was five."

What was this guy's name again? Jeff? Josh?... no... John? Yeah, [member="John Hunt"]!

"The name made mama choke for some reason," she waved that off, "but that doesn't matter. Adas is a good dog. Smart, too."

She looked at the new guy, wondering if he was a user like the rest of their group or just normal like Liam. Well, insofar as 'normal' could at all be applied to the blonde pilot. She was about to ask him something, when Liam was yelling that things were fine as he walked away from the pilot's chair to 'take care of something' and she looked over her shoulder to see him vanish from the cockpit. it was then that she noticed [member="Mira Gyndar"] had went somewhere, too. It really wasn't hard to put two and two together, but... well, no, she shouldn't assume. Force, this was hard.

Why did it have to be hard?

 

[Kaili Talith]

With the old route erased Kaili looked over to Mara as she went on to explain how to actually do it. Probably served Kaili right for getting carried away, but one could hardly hold it against her, right? The idea of figuring it all out before even knowing how to actually do it wasn’t the brightest of moves but you could hardly blame a girl for being excited.

With the actual lesson out of the way Kaili crouched down by the probe.

Kaili probably hadn’t been far off. After a few more attempts at planning a new route she flicked the button a last time and it set off. To where she didn’t know, but she could only hope it was one of the good ones that Mara mentioned that had reached somewhere planetside. Not that it was a competition, obviously. She quite clearly just was curious about if it was her probe or not. I mean, not like it was important to her to have been the one, but it totally was.

It was important to her that is.

“Do you know who's probe it was that landed where?” Subtle. “I mean, it would be cool to know.”

Kaili shrugged it off and beamed at Mara.

[member="Mara D'Lessio Merrill"]

 

[The End Narrator]

Mira blinked a few times as she felt the touch of Liam, and then felt it slip away as she continued to walk towards the engine compartment. She then felt his grasp again as she turned to face him suddenly – blinking back tears of confusion and pain. “I don’t know, I – had a vision?” She questioned as she looked above him and then beside him, avoiding eye contact with him directly.

She’d frown as she finally made eye contact with him. “Visions, from the Force can be confusing unless one is really into it, they say.” They being her mother, as she never truly focused on the Force hard enough to clear her mind of all emotions and find inner peace to sort them out. She waved her hand and let off a hearty chuckle. “It’s nothing to worry about.” She brought a hand up to gently touch his cheek.

“I’ll figure it out on my own, I just need some time.”

[member="Liam Quez"]

 

[Liam Quez]

I smiled. I was happy she was okay, the whole vision thing kind of creeped me out, but I did my best to just take what she said and go with it. I don’t think I’ll ever understand forcers, they’re weird and blame everything on the Force. For me? I think it takes a person’s effort to make things happen. If they try hard enough, if they work hard enough and trust in themselves, things will happen. I didn’t say any of that to Mira, she liked the Force and if she was happy well then part of my world was right.

On the other hand, the other part of my world seemed to be burrowing into the back of my head when I walked off. I don’t know if the feelings I was feeling from Ibaris was frustration that I left the pilot chair, or the fact that I interrupted her conversation with that boy. Instantly I felt my ears hot and I remembered the boy that was talking to her. He didn’t look right and I was wondering how that Pleb got onto the ship. Looking at Mira I calmed down a bit and leaned in close as if I was going to kiss her, but instead I licked her cheek long and slow. Pulling back, I grinned. “Adas does that to the Princess when she’s upset. She laughs after words and she’s happy again. Hopefully you’re happy now too! I gotta get back, but hope your vision makes sense or something.” I gave her a reassuring hug and then waved. I needed to get back to the pilot chair, but first.

I strolled right up to Ibaris, Adas and the Pleb. Looking at the boy and then back at Ibby I shifted the lollipop in my mouth. Something seemed on her mind and I continued to stare. Grabbing the sucker from my mouth then shoved it gently into her mouth, just under her lips. “Sweeten up Sour Puss.” I grinned.


[member="Mira Gyndar"] [member="Ibaris Varanin-Jacobs"] [member="John Hunt"]