Time to Fix That

[Liliane]

Oh, how Lilin missed the convenience of living in a busy city where on every corner, there was a coffee shop. The girl had just gotten so used to drinking a cup of this warm bitterly drink every few hours. Now, spending more and more time in the base of the Covenant, she felt like she rarely even drank coffee anymore. Not because she didn't have the time or didn't want to, but because she wasn't able to get it anywhere. She'd bought some machines so that she could make herself the drink every once and then, but... it was still difficult.

It was a rare chance that evening -- she was able to have a huge cup of it once and just have the time to enjoy it. The place was busy; with about a hundred people visiting the base a day or so, it felt like she was living in a metropolitan area. Even though it was far from being that.

Many members of the faction were her friends. Although she'd not talked to too many of them or had deeper conversations than just discussing what had been done and what was yet to be done, the whole group of people had this interesting friendly aura to them. A lot of them, at least the base members, were kids who were united by one single goal, yet also an interesting relationship which was based on trust.

Did that relationship even have a name yet? She didn't know.

But what she did know was she was going to enjoy that free afternoon. The sun was setting and it looked rather nice to her -- she at least tried to see beauty in simple things. Now if she had anybody to talk to, it would have been a perfect evening.

She noticed Kaili nearby, who happened to be one of the founding members of the faction and also a Talith. She'd actually not talked to them a lot, even though they were all around the place, working on practically everything. It was interesting to see how active they were.

"Hey, Kaili!" she said as she neared her. The two had met not only once or twice, but a lot of times, although Lilin couldn't remember one single time they'd actually had a thorough friendly conversation of any kind. Perhaps it was the time to fix that?

[ [member="Kaili Talith"] ]

 

[Kaili Talith]

Covenant HQ.

It seemed the list of places the girl would call home just kept on growing at places so vastly spread around the galaxy that she had quite frankly lost all pretentions of dedicating her time on solely one spot. Oswaft Station was school, Borleias was home-home and now with the addition of the Covenant HQ she had what she liked to call her job. Mostly fixing droids and helping out with the inspection of ships. Occasionally she got to work on the shuttles, but most often she wasn’t allowed to.

Henry was off on his own after having seen someone interesting to spy on and before Kaili could stop him he was gone. It was just her, the scrap metal on the table in front of her and a few assorted datachips. It was far from a droid but the first stage of development was conceptualizing it.

Unless you count planning, but Kaili rarely did.

“Hey, Lilin.” The girl took her eyes away from the tiny pieces of metal and smiled at the girl. “You haven’t seen a hydrospanner around here, have you? I tried to find it a few minutes ago but gave up after a while.”

Kaili looked underneath the table and sighed.

“Ugh, nevermind.” The girl groaned as she knelt down to pick up the stray tool. “Anyway, what’s up?”

[member="Lilin Imperieuse"]

 

[Liliane]

Lilin looked at the way the girl worked with the pieces of metal and was amused. She had never been able to do anything like that, no matter how hard she tried. She'd given up trying to do that after destroying a ship on her former home planet. It had ended up chaotically with the locals of the village deciding it was the best not to hand the girl anything to fix. Which was the best idea in Lilin's opinion, as well.

She would have answered Kaili's question, but it seemed as if she'd already found it before Lilin could make any noise, so she just giggled quietly before walking just a little bit closer.

"It's been a while since I've had nothing to do. So I am mainly just enjoying my little evening off of any responsibilities," she spoke before taking a sip of her coffee, which was as creamy and sugary as always. "But I see you have a lot of work to do. It looks to me like there's always something to be fixed."

Her eyes started circling the piece of metal the girl was working with. She'd come to realise physical work and dealing with materials of different kinds was not her thing, but sometimes, she still wondered if there was some hidden talent in her. She could cook, which was one of the few physical things she was able to do without messing up, but it was nothing like the work engineers and carpenters and... whoever else were doing.

Then her eyes returned to the Talith.

"It's just so fantastic to see how you're able to work with these things so incredibly well."

[ [member="Kaili Talith"] ]

 

[Kaili Talith]

Kaili stared at the cup containing the bitter steamy drink and for a second her face scrunched up. She wasn’t a coffee person as much as she was a cocoa person. Though, granted, her mother told her she had always had a sweet tooth unlike any other in the family. At one point managing to stay awake after a long day of play just on the one cookie, or two, or several. It all tempered with time, obviously, but to say the taste of sweet sugar-mixed cocoa beat coffee any given day was something so obvious to her that she simply let it all pass by.

She de-scrunched her face and nodded as Lilin talked about responsibilities.

“Oh, this? Nah, it’s a hobby project.” She said with a shrug. “I enjoy droids. They’re cool.”

An arm reached up and curled itself around the surface of her table before proceeding to draw it all over the edge of the table and into a bag by the side of it. She motioned at Lilin to place her cup on top of the improvised workbench and took the compliment with an appreciative nod.

“Thanks.” She didn’t know what else to say. “It just comes naturally, I hear I got it from my father.”

Kaili looked to the ground and shuffled her feet. What was it that Lilin did? She felt like the regular getting-backsie of saying “You do great with that thing you do” was in order, but what did she actually do?

“You... Do good too, Lilin.” Close enough. Then again... “Actually, what is it that you like to do?”

“I- I- I don’t mean it like you don’t do anything, I just don’t know you all that wellsoIkindawentallkindofyouknowIhavetoaskbecauseIwanttoknow-” Deep breath. “andIwouldneverevermeananything mean by that!”

“So, uh, what is it that you do?”

[member="Lilin Imperieuse"]

 

[Liliane]

Lilin put her cup of coffee on the table and took a moment to think of a good answer.

"I... do a lot of things. And by that, I mean I help out wherever I can, but that doesn't mean I am good at anything I do. However, I can and have given some mental and emotional help to people here."

She didn't even think about Kaili being rude for a moment. These things happened and she was actually surprised she had managed to learn what the core members of the faction did. She had come to understand Kaili was an engineerish person, Triam mined and looked for materials, Aela was the leader, Micah probably did some leading stuff, too. Or did he? She wasn't really sure anymore.

But most others? No clue.

"Not too much, but... I am not always here at the base, either. I do a lot of fighting against the One Sith and others. On my own, I mean."

She set her hair in a better style and then continued.

"But what do you do when you're away from the headquarters?"

[ [member="Kaili Talith"] ]

 

[Kaili Talith]

“Sooo... A psychologist?” Kaili asked. “I usually keep myself occupied at the Astronautical Academy in hopes of learning a thing or two about ships.”

That was her secondary interest after all. Ships came right after droids in the ‘List of Awesome’ and it was only ever so closely followed by ‘Mother’s cookies.’ Kaili was a simple girl, all things considered. Her father had once claimed a godhood status, but quite frankly she herself would be happy to just be, well, herself. A droid maker and shipwright. At least at some point in the distant. For now it was all about navigation, ship design and medicine.

The latter which was an item she only added for the sake of it’s useful nature.

“I want to build ships one day.” Kaili sighed dreamingly. “Oh well, I will have to stick to droids for a bit. Father as well as the teachers at the Academy says ships are a whole other world and I don’t doubt them.”

“What about you, Lilin? When you’re not here, what do you do? Where do you live?”

[member="Lilin Imperieuse"]

 

[Liliane]

Practical skills and jobs were a really new thing for Lilin. And she did not understand anything, no matter whether they were droids or ships. She didn't know how even the most simplistic things in existence worked. Well, she did understand what they did -- clocks showed time, stoves provided the temperatures to make food, starships were made for space transport. But the technical parts of these things were a mystery to the girl.

"I am mostly a wanderer, a traveler, an explorer. Whatever you want to call me. I have a home, though. It's in the Sith territory, which is not a very safe place to live, but it helps a lot at spying and learning what the Sith will do next."

She sighed.

"I have a part-time job. Nothing too major, just a coffee shop cashier."

So many good memories appeared in her mind's eye about her work in the shop. Some of them were extremely good and made her feel a lot brighter and cheerful.

"It isn't as boring as it sounds. Especially if you have a whole football team coming into the shop, in euphoria due to having won a match, and they compliment you."

That made her smile. It had happened once. And to her rebellious-romantic teenager mind, that was a really good thing.

[ [member="Kaili Talith"] ]

 

[Kaili Talith]

“You know what the big problem is?” Kaili scratched the back of her head only to find a loose bolt. How did that end up there? Kaili put it in the bag with the rest of the components. “There are no cute guys who are into droids, technomancy and weird... Orange eyes.” Kaili pointed at her eyes. “Yeah, they scare people off.”

“So whenever I don’t get stared at all weird, I take it as a compliment.” She could at least laugh about it. “I mean, it don’t make me feel very good at times, but I take what I can get.”

“And travelling? Yeah, I hear you. I signed up with the LAA for that very purpose. I want to get out there and see the universe. Planets, nebulae, new creatures and sights, everything. The Academy is merely a stepping stone to that.”

She went back to the previous topic in a rather absent-minded ramble. “So tell me about the job with the football guys. What are they like?”

 

[Liliane]

Lilin had to take a moment to think about an answer. She wasn't sure where to begin, that's why. Many things were worth noting about them, but she had a few little details she just had to save for the very end of the story.

"OK, I will go and just say the dudes are rather regular clients of the coffee shop, but most of their matches take place at the days when I'm not working. But a few times they've come there during my shift. Most of the time, they're tired, sweaty, feeling really hot. But when they've won a match, they don't bother to hide it."

She giggled.

"So. Since they're feeling that bad in the layers of clothing, a lot of them arrive shirtless or so. I've heard all the time, they jump into the place and make it so that everybody would notice them. They're fun, make jokes, get flirty. Most of them only have a great body to show."

Her eyes jumped from Kaili to the ground where she kept them for a few good moments before continuing.

"But one of them, I think their captain, is the best. He has all you could want -- from a sexy face to a hot body and so on."

She sighed in awe.

Spoiler

Yup, that's really strange to write.

 

[Kaili Talith]

Kaili tried to imagine it. The sweat-drenched bodies with those tiny beads of homemade coolant dripping down their muscled up forms. The playful nudges and pushes that would cause each of their muscles to tense up or extend themselves as laughter ran rampant. Their hair all curled up and in a ruffled mess and their entire beings just reeking of the sweat from yet another victory claimed by the home team.

Kaili could see the allure by it, but at the same time none of them really shared anything with her. Deep down the fourteen year old still held to the romantic ideals of a love story where personality trumped over looks. Which was not to criticize the opinion of Lilin, on this matter Kaili simply didn’t share the same ‘team spirit’ but that was all good and well.

“Imagine though,” Kaili responded. “There is this one guy. Round face, kind of a big nose on which he wears those cute glasses of his. They’re always seemingly a bit tilted, he has been working on his latest droid for a few weeks now and it’s not going where he wants it to. The voice modulator is incompatible with his expensive motherboard but that’s okay. He’s a resourceful man.”

Kaili sighed.

“Then you approach him. He gets a look of you and starts to smile.” For a second the girl smiled as well, but it quickly disappeared. “He sees your eyes, their orange shining hues and just like that his smile is gone. Replaced by a sense of fear and discomfort and all you can do is watch as he distance himself from you.”

Kaili sighed again in defeat. “So, yeah. Not a great hit with the guys.”

 

[Liliane]

Oh goodness. Lilin hadn't even though the same eyes she found so compelling and interesting, the same eyes she loved and adored, the same eyes she would have wanted to have, were frightening and caused panic in others. She'd not thought of that for even a moment before but now that she did, she could understand why one would be so afraid of such orange eyes.

They were not the most common thing, after all.

The girl looked at Kaili and a look of empathy and understanding appeared on her face. She'd never thought these people she looked up to and who she considered to be her idols lacked something she had. At that moment, she could truly understand how real these people all around her were, how imperfect and humane they were. Everybody around were the same -- just people. Nobody had perfect lives and even more flawless personalities.

It was a sad thought, even though it shouldn't have been.

"That's... sad," Lilin said, but not as a joke or a remark which was meant to harass Kaili. Instead, it was spoken with a tone of sorrow and greater understanding. Her eyes turned down and the former innocent atmosphere she had to her was replaced with one of thoughtfulness and misery.

She shook her head as she tried to forget that and move on to another subject. Although she could not forget the moment of realisation.

 

[Kaili Talith]

“You get used to it.” Kaili shrugged. “Really, I shouldn’t have brought the conversation down like that.”

The silence hung heavy, ear-deafening almost as the youngest Talith tried to find a way to revert their course into a more happier territory. Her eyes darted across the canteen, they weren’t alone around here. That could be used for something, right?

“Doesn’t mean that I don’t check others out just like everyone else. What do you think about...” She discreetly pointed at the cashier. “That guy. Stephen?”

The kid behind the counter looked average, all of him did. He wasn’t fat, he certainly wasn’t a berg of muscles. His hair reached for his shoulder in a well-groomed, slicked back manner as if the amount of time he had spent on himself equalled to about thirty minutes per week. Probably liked Protocol Droids over Astromechs too...

Kaili let her thoughts wander away into the realm of boys and robots again.

“Think he would be into droids? He strikes me as an... Protocol Droid type of guy, don’t you think?”
((Sorry for the wait!))

[member="Lilin Imperieuse"]