Private Flesh, and the Power It Holds

[Zaavik Perl]

CORUSCANT // STING RAY

One hand scooped the aimlessly rotating cat gently from the air. The creature emanated a long-winded meow as he carried it to the edge and sat both it and the shot coil up onto the ledge. "I mean, probably as good as we're going to be," he remarked as he reached over to retrieve the holopad. A mechanical finger scrolled through the massive list of error codes.

"Half of this shit isn't safe or even possible to work on unless we land." Parallel fingertips traced over a cluster of errors in particular. "Inertial dampener core, airfoil integrity, drive-side tibanna injectors, oscillat- wait." Zaavik turned to his left and felt a vertical cylindrical protrusion with the back of his hand that still gripped the autospanner. After pressing against it a few times, he drew back and struck the tool into it hard with a loud clink resonating through the cubby. A sudden whirring sounded along with the distinct sound of something small clattering through the innards of the ship. Several lights in the ship interior would flicker back to life.

A quick double-tap removed a line of aurebesh from the list. "Anyway, even the stuff I can reach while we're in hyperspace won't do anything significant enough for it to matter. If we splatter against the windshield when we exit hyperspace, it was going to happen anyway." That last bit was a joke. Mostly. Turning, he bent down to trade the autospanner for a servodriver and fusing pen. "I'm gonna have rig the wiring for those coils though, otherwise they're gonna get too much power while compensating for the missing one. If either of those overload while we're in this lane? It'll shake us to death." That part wasn't a joke.

The servodriver screamed as it removed one bolt after another on a wiring panel above where he'd disappeared earlier. Seizing the panel with both hands, he pulled it from an analog bracing and set it down against the wall. Surprisingly, the wiring looked rather in tact. It almost made him feel bad for having to mess with it. His arm sunk into the housing to find the right wires, only for something white and fuzzy to scoot past is face and evoke a small yelp of surprise.

A Scrap Rat scurried out of the housing, up the wall, and into the living quarter only to change directory at the sight of the cat. Who, of course, chased after. "Huh," Zaavik hummed. "You uh, been to Bracca or something?" A braid of blue wires with thin aurebesh labels were pulled to the threshold of the housing. "You mind helping me with this, by the way? I just need you to hold them while I fuse the right ones."

Kyra Perl​

 

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra understood none of it. She let him rabble, inserting 'uhuhs, damns, and ahs' appropriately throughout his explanation. But were they gonna be alright? Her curiosity ended there, Zaa falling victim to what her tutors had been fighting against for years-- Kyra's very limited attention span.

She rubbed a hand over Popsicle's spine as she went to dash away, her expression catching at the sight of yet another rat.

"You uh, been to Bracca or something?"

"...Uhuh," she lied, aware by now that he was not the best Zeltron at catching those. Went a bit against their inherited nature, actually, but she wasn't about to teach him something that would call her out in her lies!

Her father was going to kill her once he got ahold of this ship. Kill her and bring her back just to make her fix it with him. She sighed, dropping down into the chamber to aid in his request. "You're not gonna spend the whole trip doing this, are you? I told you not to sweat the clothing." She reached out, half-heartidly holding the device in place for him.

"There's like this two player decoder game I just got in. Or this zapper for reaction speed. The person who hits the button at the right time doesn't get zapped, heh, its great at parties. But it's good for practicing intuition too. We can play?"

 

[Zaavik Perl]

CORUSCANT // STING RAY

"...Uhuh."

Slowly, one eyebrow raised. It was true, his insight could use some work. All the things she'd slipped past him were testament to it. That response, however, wouldn't quite get past him. "Uh-huh," he mimicked mockingly, smirking to himself as the fusing pen activated. "Probably not the best choice of rodent to let free in a ship, you know?"

The end of the fusing pen sparked to life with a white-hot ignition. One at a time, he sundered the wires with a jittering, sputtering buzz. Lights and systems flicked with every disruption of current. Wires on one end were reconnected as a three-way fork to wires on the opposite end. A handful of sundered, unfused cables were left over by the end.

"Yeah, alright, a game," he finally conceded after not humoring her initial inquiry. "Hold these," he ordered while handing the leftover wires to her. Going back to the toolbox, he reached down to grab a large wire cap. Upon his return, he'd retrieve the wires from Kyra and twist the exposed end into the cap. Finishing up, the newly routed cables and capped dead ends were shoved back into the housing. The servodriver screamed as he began to replace the panel bolts to close it off.

"Okay, well, let's put the floor panels back in place and we're done, I guess." Then they could play the game she seemed to be so insistent on. Truthfully he'd been enjoying himself, but it wasn't exactly a group activity; fixing things. He'd try to be optimistic about it, but for some reason, he doubted he'd really care for it.

Kyra Perl​

 

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra watched him all the while, unable to help the subtle ripple of his mood over to her. Even if she tried to block it out, she could read his face with organic ease.

"We don't have to play," was all she said, a bit of their eagerness leaving her tone. She couldn't help but want to engage him. Even if he wasn't the first person her age in months, or a relative whom she wanted somewhere inside herself to click with, Kyra always craved a bit of interaction.

She would have once ignored his body language and forced him to sit at a table. She wasn't beyond pouting and emotional manipulation. Now she was simply too... tired to invest. She felt herself shut down, the drain of the months creeping through her.

"There's a light out in my room. Maybe you can fix it," she offered, a branch to undo what had been backed into.

 

[Zaavik Perl]

STINGRAY

"No, we can play," he reassured as he slid the last floor panel back into its place with a locking click. "We have all night. A light will only take me a few minutes." All day had been repairs, repairs, repairs. Zaavik wasn't so stubborn as to subject her to his preference the whole time. Clamorous strut brought him over to the couch where he plopped down leisurely. A groan of relief escaping him now that he'd finally entered a non-laborious position.

Leaning forward, he started clearing things off the glasteel coffee table. "Whichever is fine," he offered vaguely. He would lean back, sighing again as he kicked his boots up on the cleared tabled and waited for whatever Kyra chose.

Kyra Perl​

 

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra eyed him for a moment before nodding in acceptance.

Quick motions cranked open the delivery boxes, still unpacked spare the perishables she had already tucked into the fridge. A bag of chips came out, followed by a roll of tp. She put the latter to the side and dug in deeper, the game board lifted from the bottom.

"Hey, catch." The chips were tossed his way as she stood up, making her way back to him with the supplies in tow. "Decoder's simple," she stated mostly speaking to herself. She quickly unpacked and set up a long board, organizing the color pegs in piles.

"Here. You go first. I'll look away, you pick a pattern of colors and put it in your cubby. I need to guess it. You tell me if I've hit something right and I gotta use deductive skills to figure it all out. I only have until the end of the board. If I get there, you win. Make sense?"

Spoiler

 

[Zaavik Perl]

STINGRAY

Wrist lifted and fingers stretched to put the chips in dead-stop mid-air. Zaavik's hand dropped leisurely and allowed the chips to fall onto the table unceremoniously. That counted as catching, right? It was odd, given that he was always hungry, eating a Huttaburger in the middle of the Commenor Jedi Temple meeting was testament enough to that, but currently, he lacked any desire for snacks. The thought of rigid and salty saturated fats entering his mouth, while normally appealing, was almost nauseating now. He wore his unease on his stomach. Kyra was still a stranger, possible family or otherwise, and he was, for the time being, stuck in this ship with her.

An eyebrow raised as she explained the game to him and set up the playing area in front of him. "Yeah, I think I got it," he confirmed as he looked over the board. Eyes turned up to an expectant look while he waited for her to turn away. As soon as she obliged, Zaavik was confronted with the air above the board suddenly appearing like a transparent pane. Faults and cracks formed an erratic, complex web over the game. "Shu val?" This again? He muttered to himself in Zeltron. Every fault, line, and crevasse represented a color, a pattern, a guess, an outcome. Each of them intersecting for the possible rounds that could transpire. Why he knew what they represented? Beyond him. Just like when he'd seen one between himself and Ryv back home, he knew so much, yet too little.

A tight blink and a shake of his head refused indulgence to the Shatterpoint. When his eyes came open, it was gone, just like that. Zaavik sighed. His fingers twitched as he hovered his hand over the orbs. Blue, Red, Red, Green. He set them up in the proper order on the side of the board and slid the slot closed. "Okay, done."

Kyra Perl​

 

[Kyra Perl]

"What again?" Kyra inquired, half turning to peek at what he was doing. Yes, that was her native tongue too. Still odd to hear it used away from home. Or anywhere for that matter.

It was admittedly starting to feel distant.

She popped open the chip bag, leveling it easily between them before she turned to the board and did an easy start-- red, blue, yellow green. "These pegs here-- red if I've got a color in the right spot. White if I've got a right color in the wrong spot. Put em next to my row." She gestured, prying into the bag for a handful of salt and vinegar.

"Do you know many others from home?" She inquired, slipping back into Zeltronese with a slight grin.

 

[Zaavik Perl]

STINGRAY

"Huh?" Zaavik hadn't realized he'd said that out loud until she'd inquired about it. "Oh, nothing," he deflected with a quick dismissal. Truth be told, he wouldn't exactly be sure how to explain it if he had to. Nothing he'd found on NJO's limited archives helped, either. Could just be him going crazy? This wasn't his quest for answers, anyway. It could wait.

Zaavik grabbed the pegs, placing the corresponding indicators alongside Kyra's row of selected orbs. All but green were incorrect. The board emitted a comically cheap-sounding buzz when it processed that she'd been incorrect. An involuntary smirk was coaxed out of Zaavik from that. Curious was the game maker's art; artificially sewing a smug feeling in the victor to inflate the enjoyment.

"Do you know many others from home?"​

Both eyes turned upward with surprise. Right. Zeltron. He'd almost forgotten. Maybe it was all the human genes presumably present. It was almost betraying of her lineage. Pretty, certainly, but the vermillion and neon look wasn't quite prominent enough. To his predominantly Zeltron eyes, despite the pinkish hue, she might as well have been human. Though, most of his surprise came from the eloquence. She spoke like a corpo, or a diplomat. Weird. "Nis Zeltrisi?" From Zeltros? The urban dialect and crunchy-vowel drawl in his speech were immediately apparent once he switched to his mother tongue. Zaavik sighed, shaking his head with some dejection. He'd continue speaking in Zeltron further; "No, not really."

Most of them were dead, either by the hand of the Fourth Cartel War or somehow even less pleasantly, by his own. Zhani Amadine was probably still there, but given the circumstances, he wanted to avoid bringing her into the subject. "I didn't really have anyone after the war. Or at least, not anyone for whom I cared enough to stick around," he explained. Given the likely stark differences in dialect, it was probably hard to follow for the far more articulate Kyra. It hadn't really occurred to Zaavik to speak slowly.

"You?"

Kyra Perl​

 

[Kyra Perl]

"Oh,"came the momentary Common word, before she slipped back to their shared tongue. "Zeltros, yeah. I never really felt that war, honestly. Looking back, I see how much my mother strove to keep that stuff from reaching us."

Even thought Joza had been a jedi herself. Her mother had turned in that path in favor of mother hood. She had always wondered why her mother would do such a thing, but the more she saw of the galaxy, the more she began to understand. His explanation also shed light onto his accent, a thing which did leave her responding slower than she might have before.

"I'm sorry. That yours didn't. Good thing the jedi found you though, right?"

She put in another string of colors for him to peg.

 

[Zaavik Perl]

STINGRAY

I never really felt that war, honestly.​

Zaavik's lips pursed tellingly as he placed the pegs again. Eyes lingered with a self-deprecating disgust on the withered, burned, disfigured hand that moved the pieces. He could almost still feel the sting, smell the flesh, see the flames again. A small, sharp exhale escaped his nostrils as the cybernetic left rubbed index and thumb over his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

It all bubbled for a moment. The slowing of the verbal pace of a higher dialect was a familiar sound. Nostrils flared, he always hated that. Echoes of past memories suddenly making him irritable. "I know I sound stupid, but I'm not, don't you fuckin' talk to me like-" he rebuked venemously toward her effort to be easier to understand. His expression instantly fell into a remorseful regret. "Gossi," Sorry, he offered defeatedly at the sudden outburst. The cork was quickly placed back in the emotional bottle in his head.

The board buzzed again, but it didn't evoke any feeling of superiority this time. "Sorry," he offered again in their tongue. "That was uncalled for." Zaavik disdained how touchy he could get. Another sigh. "I guess, yeah, the Jedi. I wasn't really in a place to refuse, and it sure beat sleeping on the street." Spine straightened away from the board, waiting for her to make her move again. Though she may have vaguely alluded to it, he didn't mention his mother or real lack thereof.

"So, where on Zeltros are you from? Zeltros City, clearly, but- Palisade? Central? Or, you a Paradise girl?" Hopefully, his wish to change the subject wasn't too telling. Odd, how good he was at lying and insight when it wasn't personal; and now he was about as persuasive as a corpse.

Kyra Perl​

 

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra met his explosion with silence, the sharp emotions slamming through her. She clenched her teeth, trying to settle it all with a few deep breaths. The very edges of his infuriation pulled off of her, echoes of a past flicking behind her eye lids. That was new.

She swallowed hard, placing a new set of colors in place. She didn't respond to his apology, she didn't see a need to. She tried just as hard to brush it to the side, taking a chip and licking it clean as she accepted his topic change. "Upper Central. More residential than not. You know. For Zeltros." HIs up bringing sounded so similar to Nida, it made her heart hurt.

If only someone had found him sooner, maybe he wouldn't have to feel all that pain. She kept her eyes on the board, sticking to matters more present.

"Do you like it then? Being a jedi?"

 

[Zaavik Perl]

STINGRAY

"Zoltan Street," he followed her clarification with his own. There were places in Zeltros City where you kept your speeder doors locked, and places were you didn't slow down. Zoltan street was worse than all of them. You just simply didn't go there unless you were looking for spice and trouble, not one or the other. Planetary police didn't patrol there, warning signs hovered around the district. It was a real stain on the city as a whole.

"Do you like it then? Being a jedi?"​

Zaavik pursed his lips as the board buzzed again. She was only one color off now, but Zaavik was far less concerned with that than he was with her inquiry. The game was almost an afterthought in the face of this conversation. "I uh-" Zaavik cleared his throat quietly. "It's all I know," he explained plainly. If he wasn't a Jedi at this point, what was he? Nothing. This was all he had, all he'd known for over a decade now.

"I don't dislike it. I just- I dunno- What else is there for me? I didn't really have options then, and I still don't today. I take comfort in know that I'm doing, or trying to do good. Making a difference and all that, but this is just where fate brought me."

Zaavik reached for a chip finally, crunching it rhythmically between his teeth. He shrugged. "What about you?"

Kyra Perl​

 

[Kyra Perl]

"Same," Kyra admitted, her voice falling off.

She swallowed past a thump in her throat, clamping down on the thoughts that lead further down the path of home. Everyone in her family was a jedi. Her mother. Her father. Even Yula. She had been propelled down a path of expectation, held to her by no one other than her self and her own expectations.

What would she be if not a jedi. She didn't even know.

She couldn't even bring herself to try and figure it out.

She stared blankly at the board, her attention fading out. After a very long moment, she reached out and shoved colors in random spots, half paying attention and no longer caring.

Silence was okay too. Maybe games were more effort than she was out for.

Two days left 'till Midvinter.

 

[Zaavik Perl]

STINGRAY

The board made a victorious ringing sound, the lights illuminating and pulsing a bright green. Blue, Red, Red, Green. She'd guessed correctly. "Huh, Nice," he congratulated passively. Wasn't really a very complex pattern anyway, come to think of it. Zaavik opened the cubby and pulled his orbs out, flashing them in the correct pattern as they were held under his thumb and between the gaps in his fingers.

Fingers closed in sequence, tucking the orbs into his palm. The subtle smile that had formed faded when he noticed that she'd become suddenly crestfallen. "Hey, you okay?" The conversation had taken a rather sullen turn, in hindsight. He hoped he'd not dredged something up for her too. One by one, he removed colored pieces from the boards and began to place them back in the side pocket of the board.

"We don't have to play if you're bored- or- uh- " He was trying to make her forget, or at least shift attention. "I can look at that light if you want."

Kyra Perl​

 

[Kyra Perl]

"Sure," she murmured, sitting back and leaving the game to the table. She didn't really look at him now, the energy lost just as quickly as it came. She picked up the bag of chips and practically shoved her face into it, scrounging around for the shape she wanted. It wasn't the most engaging response. Then again, what about her really was lately.

 

[Zaavik Perl]

STINGRAY

Zaavik blinked. A blank stare regarded her bag rummaging with an uncertain awkwardness as to how to proceed. He looked down, scratching the back of his head. The silence between them was long, drawn-out, deafening. "You uh-?" He finally spoke up after what felt like forever. "You wanna talk about it?"

It didn't take an empath to figure it out. "I can tell you've got something on your mind. We're stuck in here for the next few days, so I'm not about to let you mope around the whole time." A light tease crept into his tone as he offered. "But if not, it's cool, I get it." He had no idea what he might be getting himself into, but he tried to ignore the reluctance he felt deep down. He hadn't ended up this far, stuck in hyperspace to Midvinter, for turning his back.

Wasn't gonna start now.

Kyra Perl​