Private Heroes In High Places

[Starlin Rand]

Huttaburger, Coruscant
3 AM

“Are you gonna get that damned X-Wing off my roof or what?”

Having already taken another bite out of his burger, Starlin chewed, took a sip of his drink, then swallowed before replying, “Give me a chance to finish eating, man.”

He was sitting in the cockpit of the “Pyromania”, which he had just crashed into the roof of the local Huttaburger. Well, sort of—more like skidded to a halt atop of the building in an ungraceful manner. This wasn’t the first time he’d nearly wrecked the X-Wing. He was still in piloting school, after all, and he was much more used to the Steward’s controls.

The starfighter had remained on the roof while the manager, an overweight Weequay, came running out in shock. Finding Starlin uninjured, he demanded the ship be removed from the premises at once, while also threatening to press charges. The Padawan managed to calm him down by buying an extra large meal, complete with fries and drink, and promising to use the Force to move the ship as soon as he finished.

Now that he was eating and had a chance to think, the Pyromania wasn’t really his gig anyway. Sure, it was the same sort of ship Luke Skywalker used to blow up the Death Star, but Starlin never really felt at home in it. Maybe that meant it simply wasn’t meant to be. Chit.

Well, there had to be somebody who wanted it. Leaning out of the window, he called down to the manager, “Uh, you wouldn’t happen to want this ship, would ya? I’d sell it to you for cheap.”

“You think I want this piece of junk after you crashed it into my business, you punk?”

“Hey, that rhymed.” Starlin grinned. He’d have to put verses containing the words junk and punk in a song one day. “I’ve decided I don’t want it anymore, since I keep crashing it into stuff.”

“Will you please just get it the hell outta here already?!”

“Yeah, I’ll do that! Don’t get your panties in a wad!” He held up his burger for emphasis, his hands carefully placed so that none of the toppings would fall out from between the buns due to gravity. “I’m still not done eating yet!”

Bernard​

 

[Bernard]

Sarn and Bernard had patrolled the streets of Coruscant's lower levels for several hours. Aside from one rowdy Rodian ruffian, the evening had been uneventful. Seeing the opportunity to get dinner in early, they'd stopped by a Gung Pao Wak to grab some noodles. With only an hour and some change left on the clock, they stuck around one of the main commercial squares, watching for any felonious behaviour from one of the benches.

"And so I told them 'if you disarm yourselves, you won't get harmed'," Sarn prodded Bernard's shoulder to get his attention. The Jedi remained taciturn. "Get it? Disarm? 'Cause you Jedi always ... ah, forget it. You've got that thousand-lightyear stare going again," he waved a hand in front of his partner's face, "Hey, you've got a bit of a leak, anyone home?"

Bernard startled, nearly spilling the contents of his bowl. He blinked away the disorientation and carefully slurped up the mouthful of noodles that had been dripping down his chin for the past minute.

"Wait so their arms fell off? Where'd the wookiee come from?" He muttered, cleaning himself with a napkin.

"Hopeless, utterly hopeless," Sarn lamented. He shook his head and finally dove into his own neglected portion. The two sat in silence. People had mostly deserted the square, most of the shops were long closed, but a few non-stop shops still shone with unnaturally fluorescent light that bade any passerby welcome.

Sarn felt something poke his shoulder and looked over. Bernard sat pointing down a street, eyes fixated on something in the distance. Following the gaze, he spotted what his partner meant fairly easily. At the Hutta Burger on the crossing that marked the end of Aurodium Lane, directly ahead of the two Marshals, sat an X-Wing on the food shop's roof. He could just make out what looked to be a weequay yelling at the starfighter.

"We should, uh, probably check that out, huh," Sarn said.

Bernard nodded in response.

---

“I’ve decided I don’t want it anymore, since I keep crashing it into stuff.”

“Will you please just get it the hell outta here already?!”

“Yeah, I’ll do that! Don’t get your panties in a wad! I'm still not done eating yet!”

The heated dispute echoed half-way down the street. The two Marshals had disposed of their food along the way and now walked up to the weequay at the Huttaburger's storefront.

"Uh, what appears to be the problem here, sir?" Sarn asked, pausing next to the owner, who began to loudly complain about the circumstances of the restaurant's roofing and insurance.

Bernard, meanwhile, took the initiative to jump the short distance up to the scene of the crime. He landed with a rather elegant flourish.

"Are you the owner of this vehicle?" He asked though, the starfighter held his attention more than its presumed the owner did.

Starlin Rand ​

 

[Starlin Rand]

Starlin peered down from over the edge of the X-wing, burger still in his hands. He saw a dude standing on the roof, long white hair, so pale he practically glowed, fondness for the color blue. Talked like a cop. Probably was a cop. Oh boy.

“Yep, this is my Pyromania,” Starlin replied. “I screwed up the landing, as you can see. I’m actually looking to sell this thing, cause I can’t seem to get a leg up on piloting it, y’know?”

“He crashed this thing into my establishment!” the Weequay yelled. “He should have to pay part of the damages!”

"Hey, we're talkin' up here!" Starlin yelled back. "So shut up! You'll get your insurance money, and I'll get my ship off your establishment when we resolve this. You don't start screamin' when the cops are here, trust me, you'll regret it!"

The Weequay waved his arms in a dismissive, irritated manner, but was quiet. For the moment.

Bernard​

 

[Bernard]

Bernard stood between the arguing pair as they yelled at each other a burger joint wall's height apart, a little unsure about what to do. He couldn't sense any violent intent behind either one, at most a bad temper and a barely suppressed propensity to loose some curses. Still he felt the need to step in to prevent any escalation, but, before he could, their exchange was cut mercifully short as Sarn began to placate the Weequay below, leaving Bernard with the reckless flyer.

"Not the worst landing I've seen botched," he replied, drawing a holopad and pen out from a pouch. "'Pyromania', special issue X-Wing I presume?"

He allowed himself a moment to take the ship in. X-Wing variants had become quite common following the reestablishment of INCOM and the subsequent flood of copycat designs. Most of them differed only in small ways, usually some internal system, but to a trained eye the differences between them became more clear. One could, for example, compare the Skywalker-Class X-Wing, a very sleek and angular design, to one of REC's assembly line designs that tended to be more blocky and keeping in spirit with the pre-Plague ships flown nearly a millennium ago.

"Doesn't match any of the models I'm familiar with. A smidge sleeker. More compact, too."

​

Starlin Rand ​

 

[Starlin Rand]

“Uh, yeah? I think?” Starlin shrugged. “My ma—I mean, my friend gave it to me. As a gift. She gave me a whole buncha starfighters, actually… uh, I don’t know a whole lot about them. I’m still in flight school.”

He shrugged. “But it’s got some extra stuff, modifications, all that hot stuff. Literally, ha—most of it’s fire or heat-themed. They don’t call her the Pyromania for nothin’.”

Eating some of his fries, he observed the white-haired cop while he chewed and swallowed, then asked, “You like X-wings, huh? Would you be interested in taking this one off my hands?”

Bernard​

 

[Bernard]

Bernard noted down the relevant bits of information. Name and registration, standard form. Flight school, oof, that could get painful given this landing. Non-standard modifications, he'd have to double check the codes and regulations again on where 'fiery death machines' stood on the spectrum of a-ok to extremely illegal, arrest on sight. Attempting to bribe a Marshal, that could get—did he say 'take it off my hands'?

The pen stopped on the datapad. Bernard looked up.

"Take it off your hands?"

He glanced down at his uniform and back to the pilot, one eyebrow raised.

Starlin Rand ​

 

[Starlin Rand]

“I mean like, I sell it to you. Or give it to you. If you want it.”

Starlin shrugged, continuing to munch on his fries. He had a vague notion that this somehow made the cop suspicious of him, but he couldn’t really see why.

“I don’t like it. It’s too hard for me to pilot. Clearly.” He gestured to the crash spot. “So if you want a ship…” He waved his arms emphatically, eyebrows raised. “It’s really that simple, my dude. Uh, I mean, Officer…?”

Bernard​

 

[Bernard]

"You realize that attempts to bribe officers on duty are serious offences against Inter-System Galactic Alliance law, sir?" Bernard tried to keep a note of disbelief in his voice.

It was the least he could to keep the impulse to accept the deal barred behind the steel blue of the Marshal Uniform. He set his hand against his hip, thumb nervously rubbing the datapad's case.

"This is a serious crime."

He waved the pen in the other's direction to punctuate the point.

Starlin Rand ​

 

[Starlin Rand]

Starlin blinked in shock, then burst out laughing. It took him time to recover, cling to the X-wing’s controls for support as he shook and jiggled.

“You serious? You think I’m tryna bribe you? Oh man… hehe, nah dude, Officer, I’m being serious! You want this ship, you can have it!”

But how was he going to prove it wasn’t a bribe? After all, it did sort of look that way from the cop’s perspective.

“Hey, hang on a sec—can you look up my records from here?” Starlin asked. “My name is Starlin Rand. I’m a Jedi Padawan with the Silvers, but my folks live here on Coruscant. Would a Jedi try to bribe an officer of the law?”

He smiled brightly, hoping this policeman had a good opinion of Jedi, including those of the Silver variety.

Bernard​

 

[Bernard]

The tension between his duty and his desire to let the numbers of his private X-Wing collection swell dissolved as the pilot burst into laughter.

That was not the reaction he'd expected.

Bernard glanced around, unsure of what he was looking for, but certain in his confusion, until the pilot recovered and began his explanation. It sounded reasonable enough, and a quick verification wouldn't hurt. That bowl of noodles would have gone cold by now anyways, what were a few extra minutes.

He tapped the details into his pad and pulled up the file that matched the pilot's description.

"Hm, yeah. That, uh, checks out, huh."

He glanced up from the pad.

"I suppose it's your lucky day. While I should take you in for the attempt to bribe an officer, Jedi or not, it so happens that I, too, am a Jedi. We can write the transfer of an X-Wing off as a gift from one Order to the other and call it a day with that. How's that sound?"

Starlin Rand​

 

[Starlin Rand]

Starlin’s eyes widened as the cop revealed he was actually a Jedi, though his grin widened as well.

“Hell yeah dude, let’s go!”

He climbed out of the X-Wing, cradling his burger and fries protectively as he hopped down from the roof—or rather glided down to Bernard’s level with the help of the Force.

“Where do I sign?”

Bernard​

 

[Bernard]

The sudden enthusiasm also caught him off-guard.

He straightened to back away from the Jedi, even though he came to a halt several paces ahead. Something about this exchange still felt wrong. As though he was somehow undermining the duty of a Marshal, though there was no legislation he knew of that prevented a trade between two Jedi from taking place while on active Marshal duty. It wasn't like he stopped being a Jedi when he put on the uniform.

Right?

"I guess I can write up something that transfers legal ownership of the vehicle from the Silver Jedi, or you, to the New Jedi Order. I don't think the Jedi Code ever talked about the intricacies of legal trade between multiple Orders. I don't even think they ever thought we'd have multiple Orders," he rambled as he wrote something out on his datapad. When he was done, he flipped it and presented the pen to the other.

He locked eyes with the pilot for a moment, furrowing his brows.

"Though you realize you'll still have to pay for any damages this crash-landing created, right?"

Yeah, that seemed to scratch that existential Jedi-Marshal anxiety itch.

Starlin Rand​

 

[Starlin Rand]

Like hell he was paying for it.

“Yeah yeah yeah, just lemme sign.” He scribbled his signature with his free hand on the datapad. "She's all yours, man." He then shoved a bundle of fries into his mouth.

Bernard​

 

[Bernard]

"Alright," he nodded.

He confirmed the signature, then swiped on the datapad to bring up another document.

"Sign here too please, and uh," he pointed at a few locations where empty lines broke up the mass of text that now filled the datapad, "here, here, and give a date and location there."

Starlin Rand​

 

[Starlin Rand]

Looking around for somewhere to put his food, he finally exchanged his burger and fries for the datapad, handing them over to Bernard. “You can have some, if you want. Of the fries, I mean.”

He signed his name a grand total of four times, gave the date and the location of the Huttaburger, then handed it back to Bernard. “I’m gonna need a ride.”

Bernard​

 

[Bernard]

"Sure, uh, thanks."

Not like he'd touch the burger anyway. He hadn't switched his diet to primarily plant-based foods eight years ago only to abandon all that dedication now for a taste of some hutt junk.

Though, he did try a bite of the fries. The worst it could hold was some grease. He figured a single one wouldn't contain much anyway, but was sorely mistaken when he bit down on it only for it to quasi-liquify into an oily mush. His expression soured for a second.

"Huh, oh, yeah," he double-checked the signatures and put the pad away into a back pocket.

"Sarn and I can take you to a spaceport, or we can call in someone if you need to go somewhere more off-world. Where are you headed?"

Starlin Rand​

 

[Starlin Rand]

“To my mom’s place down in Gavas-Eclat,” Starlin replied with a slight snort. The neighborhood was close enough to not bother going to a starport. “Ah chit, forgot my drink—”

He flew upwards back to the X-Wing on the roof, retrieving the soda, then back again. “Right, if you could give me a lift, that would be great.”

Bernard​