Stealing Stuff and Getting Into Mischief

[Mayumi Kochi]

Ruins of Jedi Temple (Distant Moon)

It was Jeffry, her disfigured first mate, that had suggested she get a hobby. They had been in this new dimension for a couple of months and Mayumi was having a hard time adjusting. It was after a rather bad day that Jeffry followed the trail of bodies to her cabin door on the star destroyer. It was obvious that she needed some fun and nothing was more fun for the pirate captain than stealing.

Jeffry had found a record of a Jedi temple ruin on an outlying moon that reportedly had priceless relics. There was only about a thousand traps and hideous beasts in the way of these relics.

Which only made it all the more awesome!

That is why Mayumi was now entering the ruins of a Jedi temple. Soft footsteps fell on the crumpling stone floor as she made her way forward. Thanks to Jeffry she had a rough map and a general sense of where she was going. The moon had a temperate climate but inside the ruins it was still a bit stuffy. Off in the distance she could hear the howl of some unfamiliar beast. Now she just had to not get herself killed.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Mayumi Kochi"]

Holocrons were big business, in the right circles. Basically every holocron of note had been secured by some treasure hunter or ambitious Sith or greedy Jedi. Such were Balke's conclusions after the better part of a decade, years spent coming in second or dead last. Today, just maybe, he'd be able to reverse that trend.

Now all he had to do was outrun or outwit or outfight the pirates.

The pirate ship had made itself conspicuous on his sensor alert, a subtle beep at his belt. He'd paused, bristle-brush hovering near an ancient locking mechanism, and peered into the dark catacombs as if he could see through stone and intervening distance. And maybe he could, a little, or maybe that was just confirmation bias.

He'd set a handful of low-yield flechette mines to guard the approaches to his worksite, deep within the temple. Enough to take down an unwary, unarmored intruder, but no more. Their main function was to alert him if something serious was on the approach. He'd moved them and himself a couple of times in the day or two he'd been down here, poking around in search of...well, anything not heretofore pillaged.

 

[Mayumi Kochi]

Making her way further into the ruins, the pirate made sure to pay attention to her surroundings. This place was most likely full of traps to prevent looters from doing exactly what she planned to do.

In its prime the Jedi temple must have been beautiful. Now it had fallen into decay which in a way was sad. It made her think about the lives that made their home here once.

Her eyes flicked to the floor suddenly and she bent down. There were large foot prints in the dust. Someone was here.

Standing, she made sure all of her weapons were where they were supposed to be. Then she began to follow the foot prints.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Mayumi Kochi"]

His tracks would tell a straightforward if lengthy story. Upon entering the temple, he had descended as rapidly as possible through broken floors and stairshafts. He had lingered for a while at two places, attempting to open stone doors in the lower levels. In both places he'd been successful...but only at opening the doors. Footprints and dust disturbances within the revealed rooms would tell of frustrated searching, probably fruitless. Various discolorations on stone plinths nearby would indicate the places where he had set laser trip mines, and then later removed them when he found a new work location to protect.

Eventually, of course, she would find one of those mines, about twenty metres and a catacomb right-turn away from where Balke scrubbed at a mechanism with a wire brush.

 

[Mayumi Kochi]

This was so frustrating! She had been following the tracks for over an hour and she was beginning to think that the person was lost. The tracks were everywhere and didn't seem to have any general direction. Whoever had made them must have been looking for something or was just walking around aimlessly.

Looking at her roughly drawn map, she took a few steps forward. The hair on the back of her neck began to stand up causing the pirate to stop. The footprints seemed to have stopped a few feet in front of her then picked up again. But right in front of the prints seemed to be scattered like the person had been shuffling around.

Explosives.

There was nothing out in the open so that means they were concealed either below or above.

Now she could do this the hard way and try to defuse them. But.... that would take time and would be hard.

Stepping a good distance back and hoping they would be small bombs, she pulled out her blaster and shot at the ground. Sure enough a few small explosives went off filling the hall with dust. Well that was easy. With her weapon at the ready she advanced forward.

[member="Physeter Balke"]

 

[Lina Ovmar]

Back before she'd met Moridin, back before the Sith Empire waged war upon the Mandalorians, before she'd been anyone of significance, this had been Mia's life. Temple ruins, Sith tombs. She'd lived for the next little adventure, the challenge's that treasure hunts brought her. A perk in a life that was otherwise filled with smuggling and dealing with pirates. She smiled slightly, she missed life when it was simple.

The dar'manda crouched outside the temple an E4GLE scout droid trilling happily around her head, her fingers touched the two sets of tracks leading in. One heavy set, and old. Not by long though, perhaps a couple of days. Leading in but not leading out. The second set were fresher, smaller. Hours old at best. She tapped the ground lightly with her fingers as she thought. The first, she assumed belonged to a male, heavy set, probably laden with equipment for searching. He was probably still down there. If she were him, she'd set trip wires and warning systems and whoever the second set belonged too, they were in for a pleasant surprise.

The distant thump of explosives going off echoed out of the entrance. She looked up at the droid. "After you." He disappeared into the darkness with a wheeee and Mia rose to her feet to follow, datapad in her hand, while her other unclipped her bolters holsters, just in case.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Mayumi Kochi"] [member="Mia Monroe"]

Three sounds, overlapping. Blaster shot, flechette mine detonation -- both twenty metres away, around a corner where he'd set the explosive. And a high electronic sound, piercing the aftermath, maybe an alarm or a droid vocoder of some kind. By the time the wail registered, he'd drawn and stood. The wire brush hit the stone an instant later as he scanned the thin smoke for motion. His head tilted as he stretched out in the Force, to the best of his limited ability. He felt...nothing, but he rarely did when trying to feel someone specific. But he also felt no pain, no fear, no death, and those were a lot easier to sense than just a person. Alive, then: shot the mine.

He kept the blaster pistol leveled at the corner around which his new acquaintance would have to come, and pitched his voice a little high, a little tremulous.

"H...hello?"

 

[Mayumi Kochi]

Mayumi was walking forward dusting dirt off her jacket when she heard the voice. It sounded scared but she didn't believe that for a second. If someone took the trouble to bring mines to an ancient Jedi temple then they obviously had more weapons. She sighed pulling up her blaster and aiming it at the corner where her opponent was most likely to be.

"Hey," she responded warily. "Listen, I'm not here for a fight and I'm not trying to steal anything specific. You are obviously on a mission and that doesn't really concern me. All I want to do is leave here with some Jedi relics without having this place blow up," because seriously, that had been happening a lot to her lately.

As she spoke, her feet silently moved forward with her blaster raised. What she had said was true. There was no need for them to start a shoot out. She came to the very edge corner, "so what do you say stranger?"

[member="Physeter Balke"] [member="Mia Monroe"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Mayumi Kochi"]

"I've got no quarrel with another hunter," he called back, in his normal basso profundo, "but I've been at this for a while. This place is stripped pretty bare. What's to say I'm not camped out at the only door worth breaking? I don't know that one way or another, but the thought has to have crossed your mind. I don't much fancy my odds if you decide the only things worth the trip already have my stamp on'em."

 

[Mayumi Kochi]

"Is what you want shiny?" she asked immediately. It was true that she was ruthless and violent, but she was also a pirate. She liked jewels and expensive dresses she would never wear. She wanted things that made her feel pretty. There was a lot that she sold and traded but to be frank she had enough credits to last her ten lifetimes. Really she was just here because she was bored.

"Because if it doesn't sparkle and have some rubies attached to it then I don't want it," she said with a shrug.

[member="Physeter Balke"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Mayumi Kochi"] [member="Mia Monroe"]

A little facile, maybe. The black market for Force curios was alive, well, and entirely outside of Balke's price range. But what might be a transparent bit of word play might also be entirely genuine. Her voice sounded closer, clearer; he stretched out to the Force for some indicator of deception and found nothing.

Absence of proof did not constitute proof. And there were no reliable shortcuts to thought.

The lack of tangible deception might qualify as weak evidence in the technical sense. The ship was a data point too. Stretched out like this, burning seconds, he smelled avarice, and his sensor indicated a single good-sized vessel. Weak evidence, then, that she was a raider and thus possibly telling the truth.

But there were bigger problems. Like the newly arrived Force presence, unmistakably Dark-tinted and gleeful and much, much stronger than Balke. On balance, better to cut and run.

"Anything I'm after would be a schutta to fence," he said at last, pondering how hard it would be to blast the door rather than use due diligence. "No precious metals or gemstones involved."

 

[Mayumi Kochi]

"Awesome, so we shouldn't have a problem then?" she asked putting her blaster down a bit. Maybe if she was lucky she would be able to find a crown or a tiara. That thought made her think of her former life in the other dimension which caused a huff of breath to escape her. Damn she really hated it here.

She was about to say something to the guy on the other side of the door when her sensor began to beep. Droids.

The pirate didn't have the force to tell her that something was here but she could start to feel an uneasiness. She just couldn't catch a break could she.

Looking at the door that the man was behind, she cursed under her breath and moved forward quickly. "Please don't shoot me!" She said to the guy behind the door as she darted forward and hit the door. It gave way behind her weight and as soon as she was inside she closed it. Turning quickly to address the strange man, she smiled praying he wouldn't shoot her. "Hey."

[member="Physeter Balke"] [member="Mia Monroe"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Mayumi Kochi"]

He might have shot her regardless, if his attention wasn't deeply and immediately occupied by [member="Mia Monroe"]'s little floating probe droid. Dang thing looked like a seeker remote or a thermal detonator. So he shot it in the face, at range, as soon as he saw it. It didn't turn out to be explosive, but better safe than dead. Presumably, its owner would be irked, whether that was the woman who'd just shoved her way in or the dark presence that was getting stronger. With a grunt, he holstered his gun and turned back to the ancient locking mechanism.

"Keep a lookout while I finish getting this open," he said, drawing a vibroblade. He set the inert tip against a seam of stone and ancient metal. "Think I've figured out where to cut. Probably."

The blade buzzed to life, then snarled and bucked in his hand, sinking into the mechanism. Smoke rose from the seams. He jerked the vibroblade up and out, and a substantial chunk of wall just...dropped away, followed by a length of corroded chain. The whole affair vanished into a bottomless slot two handspans wide. He stepped over it carefully, and into...a vault. With some very interesting things inside.

He half-turned to keep her in his sightline.

"We still clear on our deal?"

 

[Lina Ovmar]

The feed from the droid cut out in time with a distant blaster shot. "Son of a queen." she muttered, dropping the datapad into her pocket and drawing both bolters at her hips. She moved quickly, weapons raised at every corner. She extened her sense beyond her immedieate surroundings, looking to get a feel for what she was walking into. Nothing that she believeed to be paticularly dangerous. She passed the cource of the explosion she'd heard earlier.

A door closed up ahead and she found the charred remains of her droid. Pausing, she holstered one weapon and slid the pack from her pack, dropping the droid inside. Slinging it back into place, she eyed the closed door ahead of her. She could call out, play nice and save everyone the pain. But they already knew she was here.

And they'd already shot her droid.

Standing to her full sight, she immeresed herself in the force, palms up she pushed with the force slamming the door into whoever the unfortunate soul was on the otherside.

"Knock, knock." she called out in a flat tone.

[member="Physeter Balke"] [member="Mayumi Kochi"]

 

[Mayumi Kochi]

She didn't have time to answer the man on the other side of the door. Before she knew it the door was being blasted in and Mayumi went flying through the air. She hit the wall with a thud. Laying there, she moved her head only to see a woman standing in the doorway.

"I feel like that was uncalled for," she coughed out from her position on the floor.

[member="Mia Monroe"] [member="Physeter Balke"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Mia Monroe"] [member="Mayumi Kochi"]

"No," said Balke absently, in the flat basso that indicated he was thinking about five things at once, "I shot her droid. That's fair."

He was still standing just inside the vault. And what a vault it was. Small, to be sure, but somehow or other they were the first to raid this one. The Jedi had never been much for gold and jewels, no matter what the pirate woman had hoped to find. Or said she'd hoped to find. The vault was maybe twelve feet deep, its walls lined with shelves of bizarre little objects. Some were embedded in amber resin. He grabbed a few of those with the Force, a fraction of the vault's contents but as many as he could manage with his limited strength, and dragged them toward himself.

Then sidestepped, turned sideways, and dropped through the slot where the door had been.

The shaft was claustrophobic and narrow, not exactly ideal for falling. At least it was smooth, but friction began to burn him at half a dozen points both back and front. Darkness fell almost immediately, but he could hear resin-clad trinkets tumbling past him into nothingness, falling faster than he was.

 

[Lina Ovmar]

"What he said." Mia piped up, walking across the fallen door, keeping a gun loosely trained on the pirate. She wasn't much of a threat but it was always a good idea to watch your back. "That was expensive, by the way." she said, but she couldn't see him, not just yet he was tucked just out of sight and dropped out of sight the moment she became level with the door.

Mia blinked, stepping over the threshold and glancing over the vault's contents before peering down the shaft he'd dropped into, still keeping a gun on the pirate girl. "And there was me thinking that sith were the sneaky ones." she muttered to herself. trinkets and treasure and nothing of much use, but enough to put your average treasure hunter off the scent of anything of real value. She glanced at the girl, giving her a once over before finally holstering her guns and kneeling over the shafts entrance.

"For the record, I don't need a gun to kill you, so don't try anything stupid." she said off hand debating whether to follow or not. If there was something of worth down there, the Underground would be glad to have it, and he wouldn't have gone to such measures if there was not. It was nice to have someone do the hard work for you. Mia swung her legs over the hole and dropped into it, disappearing after him.

[member="Physeter Balke"] [member="Mayumi Kochi"]

 

[Mayumi Kochi]

"Stupid Force users. Thinking they can just hit people with doors. It just ain't right", Mayumi thought to herself as the woman talked to her.

After the woman warned her about not trying anything then disappearing down the shaft, the pirate tested her limbs. Nothing was broken but she had some nasty bruises and some unpleasant cuts. Moving gingerly over to the shaft and looking down, it seemed like a long drop. "I'm going to regret this," she muttered and then stepped over the edge.

[member="Mia Monroe"] [member="Physeter Balke"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Mayumi Kochi"] [member="Mia Monroe"]

Balke gritted his teeth as he continued to slide. The surface grew rough and slanted. Artifacts tumbled past him in the dark. Any second, he could go off an infinite ledge or slam into something lethal. Putting his feet close together, he adjusted his course by instinct, hoping that a gut feeling would save his life. It had before, just not reliably.

Small tumbling rocks rolled down his collar from above, and that presence wasn't getting farther away. With a growl, he rolled onto his belly and let the flak jacket take the rough impact. His knees would be pretty battered by the end of this, though. He'd lost his grip on the vibroblade; instead, he ripped his last little frag mine from his belt pouch and adhered it to the slope as he fell. Ideally, he would keep falling in the dark, Monroe would set off the mine in a couple of seconds, and-

He slammed feet-first into cold water, face banged against the rock slope-

 

[Lina Ovmar]

Mia had a history of getting herself into terrible situations, pride and stubbornness were usually the catalyst's of such events. Today though, there was no pride or stubbornness. Jumping down a shaft with no idea whats at the end behind a man who had clearly set previous traps was quite simply, stupid. This dawned on her a few meters down and she used the force to slow her descent, that was until she heard the girl above her.

"Feth." She tucked her arms in crossing them across her chest and crossed her ankles and stopped slowing herself. She let gravity do its work and tried to look down, tried to watch her path and glimpsed something that wasn't a rock jutting out of the shaft. Something that looked very much like a mine. She flung her arms and legs out, pushed against the walls with the force and brought herself to a stop just as her feet triggered it.

BOOM

Shrapnel ripped through her lower legs and she let out a scream of pain, let go of the walls and dropped the rest of the way, pain trying to drag her into darkness. She had to stay awake. Was that water? Pain was nothing. Pain she could deal with. Cold water engulfed her, bringing the world back to her sharply, though she could only see it through clouds of her blood.

[member="Physeter Balke"] [member="Mayumi Kochi"]