Nen Lev'i
Nov 30th, 2012, 05:13:55 AM
Vertical City, Nar Shaddaa
So, this is a fantastic idea. Absolutely nothing could possibly go wrong.
The kitchen table had been appropriated, the abandoned unwashed crockery and cutlery stacked haphazardly to one side to make enough room to work. In there place was strewn every kind of tool and gizmo imaginable - some there for logical reasons; some there just in case; some there just because they looked cool, and the ensemble didn't quite look right without them. A pair of keen and contemplative eyes surveyed the arsenal; the sweeping gaze hesitated for a moment, settling upon an erroneous spoon that had snuck in uninvited. The eyes narrowed in incredulous disapproval, but the associated hands hesitated for a moment, considering whether or not a spoon might actually come in handy after all. Deciding that it probably wouldn't, the utensil was tossed casually into the miscellaneous heap. The added weight threatened an avalanche: but for the moment at least, gravity seemed eager for the hands and the eyes to get on with what they were all here for.
The centrepiece of the gadgetry array was by far the most important. To the untrained eye, the cylinder of burnished durasteel could easily have been mistaken for a flashlight or some king of custom tool. Of course, given it's cultural significance, you'd have to fly a lot of lightyears to find an untrained eye in this galaxy: decades may have passed since the Jedi Knights had enforced law and order, but that wasn't nearly long enough for something so iconic to be forgotten. You'd have to be some sort of idiot child from a backwater rock to not recognise a lightsaber when you saw one.
Given the infamy of such devices, and the well-documented danger they posed to anyone on the wrong end - or even the right end, if handled improperly - what Nen Lev'i intended to do might have been considered naive; perhaps even foolish. He knew better, of course.
When it came to technology, Nen was what many would have described as 'gifted'. He might struggle when it came to interacting with other sentients - especially those of a female persuasion - but when it came to interacting with machines, he was a poet. For every social grace that eluded him, he could boast a plethora of scientific and engineering concepts that his mind had mastered. He could calculate the exact time difference between any two worlds in the galaxy down to the nearest millisecond in his head; he just couldn't manage to ask a girl what the time was in the first place.
That understanding was learned largely through experience. It was one thing to know that a set of sonic callipers could be used to measure microscopic distances; it was another to understand that it did it using hypersonic waves, and to be able to jury-rig the tool to send a feedback pulse through the voice recognition inputs on a locked blast door. And while the theory might have been learned from a book or a holovid, it was hands-on tinkering that turned theory into practice. Nen could say with considerable confidence that there wasn't a single gadget or appliance anywhere in his apartment that hadn't been dismantled, scrutinised intensively, and then put back together. It was just the way he learned.
His hands hesitated over the lightsaber's sleek casing. Of course, most of the things I dismantle aren't capable of unleashing limb-removing blades of plasma, he mused.
The 'saber was a magnificent piece of craftsmanship. Every component fit together perfectly with no visible seals; no screws or latches to hold the pieces together. It was almost like it had been assembled using magic; and considering that it had once belonged to a Jedi, that wasn't entirely beyond the realms of possibility.
Lifting the weapon carefully, Nen's eyes squinted at every detail, looking for some sign of separation or connection; something he could trigger to open up the casing and get at it's inner workings. His focus honed in on the tiniest of laser-thin interruptions in the sleek, polished surface: a slender hairline that ran the full circumference of the hilt, about an inch above the pommel. Gentle at first, and then more forceful, Nen attempted to twist and then pull the two apparent sections of durasteel apart; but it didn't shift even the slightest micron. Frustration tightened his grip, and once again he stared at the decorations carved into the weapon: strange sigils of hyperbronze inlayed from a language that seemed familiar, and yet that he couldn't quite place.
Nen turned the 'saber slowly in his hands, letting his eyes dance across the pommel itself. Five perfect, equal spheres were spaced around a more ornate, solar-looking sigil in the centre. There was a deviation though: an error. While perfect by comparison to each other, the spacings were wrong. A perfect quintet would be spaced precisely seventy-two degrees from each other, but four of the angles were slightly smaller; the fifth was wider, a much smaller engraving of some sort of symbol - a bisected circle, or a spindle perhaps - placed in between. It seemed almost like a mistake, as if the craftsman had miscalculated and been forced to add something in to disguise it.
Nen peered closer, eyes barely picking out the separation between the tiny circle and the bar that marked it's poles. Hands reached for the slenderest tool in his arsenal; carefully, he lined the pinhead up with the tiny circle -
The sound of the door opening nearly made him leap out of his skin. His muscles fired off all of their own accord, and the pinhead jammed into the pommel, depressing the concealed stud. The hidden latch retracted, and with an audible clunk the entire end inch of the lightsaber plummeted onto the kitchen table.
Nen froze, eyes widening like a womp rat in headlights as he fumbled through his mind for something to say.
"This isn't what it looks like."
Silently, he cursed himself: a blatant and obvious lie wasn't going to help him in the slightest. "Okay, it is what it looks like. But it's totally fine. Perfectly save." His eyes twitched, gaze flicking about the room in the hopes that something might magically appear and rescue him. It didn't. He offered a nervous smile. "Honest."
From the intimidating, unwavering stare-glare that was thrown his way, Nen inferred that the kitchen invader wasn't convinced. Part of his mind also managed a few seconds to be impressed at how threatening she managed to look while wearing so little. More of his mind had to forcibly wrestle that thought into submission before it went anywhere that it shouldn't; in the meantime, his face stared more or less blankly in her direction.
Say something else! his subconscious hissed. Inspiration floundered.
"You look lovely, by the way," he offered, another nervous attempt at a smile twitching at his features. He could feel the hole he'd dug himself into slowly deepening, the awkwardness closing in around him even tighter with each passing second. "Hello."
So, this is a fantastic idea. Absolutely nothing could possibly go wrong.
The kitchen table had been appropriated, the abandoned unwashed crockery and cutlery stacked haphazardly to one side to make enough room to work. In there place was strewn every kind of tool and gizmo imaginable - some there for logical reasons; some there just in case; some there just because they looked cool, and the ensemble didn't quite look right without them. A pair of keen and contemplative eyes surveyed the arsenal; the sweeping gaze hesitated for a moment, settling upon an erroneous spoon that had snuck in uninvited. The eyes narrowed in incredulous disapproval, but the associated hands hesitated for a moment, considering whether or not a spoon might actually come in handy after all. Deciding that it probably wouldn't, the utensil was tossed casually into the miscellaneous heap. The added weight threatened an avalanche: but for the moment at least, gravity seemed eager for the hands and the eyes to get on with what they were all here for.
The centrepiece of the gadgetry array was by far the most important. To the untrained eye, the cylinder of burnished durasteel could easily have been mistaken for a flashlight or some king of custom tool. Of course, given it's cultural significance, you'd have to fly a lot of lightyears to find an untrained eye in this galaxy: decades may have passed since the Jedi Knights had enforced law and order, but that wasn't nearly long enough for something so iconic to be forgotten. You'd have to be some sort of idiot child from a backwater rock to not recognise a lightsaber when you saw one.
Given the infamy of such devices, and the well-documented danger they posed to anyone on the wrong end - or even the right end, if handled improperly - what Nen Lev'i intended to do might have been considered naive; perhaps even foolish. He knew better, of course.
When it came to technology, Nen was what many would have described as 'gifted'. He might struggle when it came to interacting with other sentients - especially those of a female persuasion - but when it came to interacting with machines, he was a poet. For every social grace that eluded him, he could boast a plethora of scientific and engineering concepts that his mind had mastered. He could calculate the exact time difference between any two worlds in the galaxy down to the nearest millisecond in his head; he just couldn't manage to ask a girl what the time was in the first place.
That understanding was learned largely through experience. It was one thing to know that a set of sonic callipers could be used to measure microscopic distances; it was another to understand that it did it using hypersonic waves, and to be able to jury-rig the tool to send a feedback pulse through the voice recognition inputs on a locked blast door. And while the theory might have been learned from a book or a holovid, it was hands-on tinkering that turned theory into practice. Nen could say with considerable confidence that there wasn't a single gadget or appliance anywhere in his apartment that hadn't been dismantled, scrutinised intensively, and then put back together. It was just the way he learned.
His hands hesitated over the lightsaber's sleek casing. Of course, most of the things I dismantle aren't capable of unleashing limb-removing blades of plasma, he mused.
The 'saber was a magnificent piece of craftsmanship. Every component fit together perfectly with no visible seals; no screws or latches to hold the pieces together. It was almost like it had been assembled using magic; and considering that it had once belonged to a Jedi, that wasn't entirely beyond the realms of possibility.
Lifting the weapon carefully, Nen's eyes squinted at every detail, looking for some sign of separation or connection; something he could trigger to open up the casing and get at it's inner workings. His focus honed in on the tiniest of laser-thin interruptions in the sleek, polished surface: a slender hairline that ran the full circumference of the hilt, about an inch above the pommel. Gentle at first, and then more forceful, Nen attempted to twist and then pull the two apparent sections of durasteel apart; but it didn't shift even the slightest micron. Frustration tightened his grip, and once again he stared at the decorations carved into the weapon: strange sigils of hyperbronze inlayed from a language that seemed familiar, and yet that he couldn't quite place.
Nen turned the 'saber slowly in his hands, letting his eyes dance across the pommel itself. Five perfect, equal spheres were spaced around a more ornate, solar-looking sigil in the centre. There was a deviation though: an error. While perfect by comparison to each other, the spacings were wrong. A perfect quintet would be spaced precisely seventy-two degrees from each other, but four of the angles were slightly smaller; the fifth was wider, a much smaller engraving of some sort of symbol - a bisected circle, or a spindle perhaps - placed in between. It seemed almost like a mistake, as if the craftsman had miscalculated and been forced to add something in to disguise it.
Nen peered closer, eyes barely picking out the separation between the tiny circle and the bar that marked it's poles. Hands reached for the slenderest tool in his arsenal; carefully, he lined the pinhead up with the tiny circle -
The sound of the door opening nearly made him leap out of his skin. His muscles fired off all of their own accord, and the pinhead jammed into the pommel, depressing the concealed stud. The hidden latch retracted, and with an audible clunk the entire end inch of the lightsaber plummeted onto the kitchen table.
Nen froze, eyes widening like a womp rat in headlights as he fumbled through his mind for something to say.
"This isn't what it looks like."
Silently, he cursed himself: a blatant and obvious lie wasn't going to help him in the slightest. "Okay, it is what it looks like. But it's totally fine. Perfectly save." His eyes twitched, gaze flicking about the room in the hopes that something might magically appear and rescue him. It didn't. He offered a nervous smile. "Honest."
From the intimidating, unwavering stare-glare that was thrown his way, Nen inferred that the kitchen invader wasn't convinced. Part of his mind also managed a few seconds to be impressed at how threatening she managed to look while wearing so little. More of his mind had to forcibly wrestle that thought into submission before it went anywhere that it shouldn't; in the meantime, his face stared more or less blankly in her direction.
Say something else! his subconscious hissed. Inspiration floundered.
"You look lovely, by the way," he offered, another nervous attempt at a smile twitching at his features. He could feel the hole he'd dug himself into slowly deepening, the awkwardness closing in around him even tighter with each passing second. "Hello."