Destiny's Paths

[Ben Merasska]

"Ben, I need your 'elp. Zere is someone I must find. On Presbalin."

Ben leaned back and looked out the cockpit. The buildings crowded each other here like a massively overgrown forest of tranparisteel and duracrete trees. Palara was out there somewhere; he wasn't too worried about her. His mind was instead focused on Shuvin, and Cerie, and the hyperlane he could see stretching before him. So many choices, and he'd be a horrible person if he thought all of them were his to make.

Shuvin and Cerie would have their own to make also.

And they'd have passengers.

Ben let his head fall back, closed his eyes, and let out a breath. Ever since Cato Neimoidia, Shuvin had been much more quiet around Palara. The two hadn't been especially close beforehand, but now Shuvin was almost confining herself to her bunk to avoid the woman she'd once admired. Ben wasn't sure if it was a sense of solidarity to Eluna (and he didn't want to think about that right now, thank you), or if Palara had become different and more menacing to Shuvin since then, but (steadfastly ignoring the hypocrisy) he hoped she wasn't holding those events and the revelations they'd contained against the woman. Palara was no real danger to Shuvin.
He'd jumped at the chance to pick up Sindy, the girl whom he'd once ferried to the Jedi. Apparently she wasn't sticking around. It was a nice, normal job, picked up from a contact in the Gossam Merchant Fleet, one which brought them to the Neutral Sectors, which had much more traffic recently and were easier to get lost in despite the heavily patrolled space around them. It served as a distraction to the utter dead end that was Corulag and the orphanage that had held Esther. With no leads, and no way to find them, Ben was stuck aimless until lightning struck. He glanced up at the sky. Speak of the metaphor...

Clouds were gathering above them, dark and grey and filled with thunder rolling down around them and echoing between the massive trunks of the buildings.

"They'd better get here soon," he grumbled, kicking his feet up to rest them on a console. "Already been here a day."

[Siyndacha Aerin]

She began to feel freer, unburdened, the moment her shuttle departed Ossus. The further out she went from that world and its binary stars, the closer she felt to the whatever it was that she was moving towards. Now with Ben, she'd spent the first leg from the merchant fleet to Presbalin sticking her nose into every part of the ship that she could get away with, until she was satisfied that she more-or-less knew the vessel inside and out. Memory was a wonderful thing, and she had it in spades; she leaned up against the thru-way to the cockpit, listening to the gingered pilot grumble to himself while she recalled every detail of when she'd met him and what all had happened.

"On Kiffu, lightning is harnessed to provide electrical energy," she said, noting the brewing storm, "the electrical storms from which the energy is harnessed are caused by Kiffu and her sister Kiffex rubbing together."

And other trivial facts. How species adapted to their living situations was at-times fascinating.

"You're not afraid of lightning, are you?"

She picked on him last time, too.

[Ben Merasska]

"Aha. Hahaha. Haha. No," Ben said, glancing back at Sindy. Why was it he was constantly working with Forcey-Worcey people?

Well, maybe it wasn't constantly, or at all really since the last time he'd met up with Sindy, but a couple times was far more than he was comfortable with to be honest. But she was paying, and he wasn't doing well enough to be able to discriminate against her credits. And she wasn't so bad once he got down to it; Palara was just as bad if not worse.

"You get yourself settled in and a nice eyeful of my ship then? Must have missed Shuvin. She'd have kept you for at least another hour talking about Alderaan if you had."

[Shuvin Undhi]

It was quiet.

This was odd in itself, as it was more usual for Ben to have music of some kind playing or be whistling tunelessly while working on something.

Shuvin wasn't too worried, despite the noticeable difference. She'd spent most of the time relaxing and avoiding the suddenly very scary Palara Iscandar.

She woke up to the sound and feeling of an approaching storm, the ship quieter than normal, and a sense of tense anticipation that had her getting out of her bed and using the fresher.

Suitably eased, Shuvin dressed in her normal grey A-shirt and dark trousers and stepped out into the ship.

"Ben," she called. "Ben!"

"What!" His voice came back to her.

"You and Cerie didn't finish off the last of the leftovers, did you?"

She walked up to the galley and looked toward the cockpit access ladder to see a pretty woman with pale hair standing there.

"Oh. Hi there. Name's Shuvin, I do the mechanical work around here."

[Siyndacha Aerin]

"I did..." She started, only to be cut short by a division of her attention.

At the sound of another voice, she turned. Speak of the devil, and... well, devils didn't look like that, now did they? It wasn't quite staring, but she did take a good glance, finding the Togruta sufficiently nice to look at, overall. Enough to actually make her turn around, and rake a hand through her chalk-white mane, loosely gathered into a makeshift bun at the nape of her neck. Icy blue eyes returned to Shuvin's face, if only for the sake of looking at her when speaking.

"Sindy," she gave, along with a proffered hand, after her scrutiny, "I'm something of an engineer, myself."

Understatements weren't a normal thing for the half-Echani, but they had their uses.

[Shuvin Undhi]

"Pleased to meetcha," Shuvin said, a smile stretching over her face. from where she looked up at them — well, at Sindy, since Ben was sitting in the pilot's chair and she couldn't see him from her position. The sixteen year old shifted on her feet.

"No, Shuvin," Ben said, his voice cutting between them lethargically. "There should still be some left."

"Good," Shuvin answered, her smile getting wider. "You hungry Sindy? I can heat up something for you too if you'd like."

Thunder crashed distantly.

"She'd better get here soon," Ben grumbled to himself again, his chair creaking slightly.

"It's only been a day," Shuvin replied.

"Yeah. I'm getting antsy," he said, a note in his voice that Shuvin wasn't sure she liked.

[Siyndacha Aerin]

Had she eaten today? Her stomach reared its hangry head at the offer of food, and her eyebrows reached for each other, creasing the middle of her forehead. Well, that answered that question. She must have been so focused on getting away that she had put off eating, before forgetting entirely.

"I..." a pained look ghosted over her features, "...yes. It would appear I am, Shuvin."

Shuvin, Shuvin, Shuvin. She'd remember the name. After the exchange between the Togruta and Ben, another creasing look crossing over her face as her gaze returned to the younger girl, after craning her neck around to look at Ben.

"Who is 'she'?"

[Shuvin Undhi]

"Well it's —"

"'Nother passenger, Sindy. She'll probably keep to herself during the trip."

Shuvin's open mouth twitched in surprise as Ben cut over her; it was quick enough that it wasn't likely he meant to do it, but was simply just slower to react to the question, but it did make Shuvin think for a moment that Palara might actually prefer her privacy. Ben's voice also wasn't tinged with fear and wariness. He simply sounded tired.

It made Shuvin a bit more worried than she otherwise would have been.

"Well, come on then Sindy," Shuvin said brightly. "Leftovers await!"

She waited for the white haired girl to descend the ladder and started walking.

"So whatcha think of Alderaan?" Shuvin asked. "Assumin' you took a bit of a look-see that is. I don't have any formal learning when it comes to machines, I just have a knack for 'em and can read the instruction manuals without getting a headache."

She huffed softly in laughter at the old joke at Ben's expense. He was fine with electrical systems and could follow instructions, but leaving him by himself to do a task with the mechanical systems and anything more in depth had him scratching his head and reading the data pads upside down.

"Unless you don't want to of course," Shuvin said quickly, "you're a passenger and there's not call for us to ask you to work when we're working for you. I'd just appreciate an expert's opinion, as long as you're not too cutting about it, yeah?"

She grinned at the other girl and winked as they entered the galley; Shuvin's hand absently brushed against the panel on the wall, pressing a button and continuing to walk as the lights came on smoothly, going from dim to bright instead of flashing on immediately.

[Siyndacha Aerin]

That both answered and didn't answer her question in one fell swoop. No use in prying, and the Togruta girl was urging her in another direction; she had reason to believe she would find out about this other 'she' sooner or later, and whatever the delay, she was in no personal rush - the key point had been to get herself away from the Jedi, and decide on her next move. Setting the matter aside in her mind, she went down the ladder and into the company of Shuvin Undhi, following along.

"Looks as it should, though derivative of the stock specifications - are they your alterations? Out of necessity, boredom, preference, or fancy?"

Not that the why mattered in the grand scheme of things, but it was interesting to see what motivated the decisions that were made. She stepped into the galley as the lights rose from dim to bright on a slow scale that she could appreciate.

"Knowing about everything that has and does come out of every starshipwright possible is a hobby," she admitted, in afterthought.

[Shuvin Undhi]

"Yep; well, mostly mine. I worked for the scrapyard that got her, and lived in her and fixed her up when I wasn't working for them. Ben bought her and all of a sudden there's an engineer and a crew putting in a new reactor core and sublight system. Proper Cizeracks too," Shuvin wrinkled her nose, "wouldn't spare me the time of day. Me an' Ben here flew her to Contruum and did most of the rest of the alterations with the help of one of his friends. Kinda creepy guy, goes by the name of Sarin. Well, he's not really creepy, but he looks at you like he's studying you through an electro-microscope, you know? Like you're a specimen or an experiment or something."

Shuvin opened the cooler and bent over, sticking her head inside and digging around.

"I'm really proud of the water system we have going on. I set up the first parts of it when I worked for the scrap yard; set up a split-connection to the water system in the building and fed it through a hose to Alderaan, since we had water and I didn't fancy taking sonic showers when I didn't have to, you know? Ben took a liking to it and when we gutted her out to do the remodeling, Sarin had some people do the water lines and set us up with really expensive recyclers..."

Shuvin chattered on as she pulled out a couple sealed containers and opened them, revealing a thick stew and some bread, turned on the oven and slid the stew container inside.

[Palara Iscandar]

R4-E2 let out the quietest little chirp of a question as it leaned forward and peeked around the corner.

—Is it safe?

She glanced back and deactivated her saber.

"Come along," the Imperial Knight said shortly, clipping the weapon onto her belt and walking on through the now deserted side streets. R4 obediently trundled along behind, but kept a bit of distance. Couldn't be too careful around those magic-type-people.

Again, it wondered to itself why all this was happening. It had liked its previous job! Sure, there was several instances of threatened disassembly, and more than a couple times it had been forced to erase and slice into other droids (a macabre task to be sure), but the challenge! There was nothing quite like having to slice into a firewalled and encrypted and hostile R2 unit (it knew that the R2 series was generally better at most tasks if properly kept up too so there was the added pride of having outdone a superior opponent also) while evading blaster fire and exfiltrating successfully. Its conical head (about the only thing R4-E2 disliked about itself, really) made being inconspicuous and not being a target harder than it should have been.

— Not very personable, are you? It asked her. She ignored it, causing it to grumble to itself quietly. Webbit would never have ignored it. Webbit the Jawa was R4's favorite person.

They were in the starport now, R4 was sure. Rain was falling, getting into its lens, and the astromech was getting annoyed. How would Webbit find it to fix this damnable headpiece? It had liked the rounded hexagonal designs! This stupid cone was ridiculous!

The Imperial Knight glanced back, and R4 sped up, coming up directly behind her.

"Talkative, no?" she said, looking at the droid.

— You have no idea, sister. R4 replied, snapping some surreptitious pictures for Webbit. It was kinky and odd, but the Jawa loved twileks, and this one in her wet clothing would drive him insane.

She stopped at a gate and pressed a series of buttons on the access pad; a door screeched open quickly, and screeched shut behind them.

A Ghtroc-720, third generation if R4 had to guess, was sitting there, its fore ramp open underneath the cockpit like some long angular mouth. It couldn't really see within, but the Knight was obviously familiar with the ship, as she barely stopped to glance at it.

A figure stood at the head of the ramp as they approached the foot. A human man, with reddish blond hair. He wore loose trousers with lots of small pockets, a dirty off white long sleeved shirt, and worker's boots, dirty and scuffed. Hanging from his belt was a holstered blaster of a design and make R4 wasn't too familiar with.

"Palara," the man said, his expression guarded, but his hand nowhere near his blaster. The Imperial Knight smiled, her features softer than R4 had ever seen so far; though it had only seen her on the tail end of a couple of heated blaster exchanges and a quick dirty fight with thugs in the side streets. Admittedly those were not situations where relaxed and 'soft' expressions would be found very often. Or at all. R4 was a droid, not a biological creature; how in the hells was it supposed to know what was and wasn't proper moments for biological reactions?

"Ben," the Knight, Palara, responded. "Thank you."

"This it?" Ben asked, stepping to the side as she and it ascended the ramp and entered the ship. Palara nodded.

"Zere was supposed to be a Jawa too, but 'e could not come like I expected 'im too."

Ben shrugged. The sounds of muted laughter and speech filtered through the corridor.

"We have another passenger," he said. "She's got cabin three I believe."

"I 'ave managed to keep zat 'idden before, Ben," Palara said in annoyance, though her irritation subsided quickly. "Zere is no reason I cannot do ze same now."

"Well," Ben said awkwardly. "All right. Shuvin's cookin' up some leftovers. Get yourself situated and I'm sure she'll spare you some."

R4 decided that it couldn't take much more of this boring talking, and made its way down the corridor to the galley, while taking the measure of the ship. On the outside it looked like any other third generation, but the inside was completely different! Webbit would love this!

Sitting at the table in the galley were two females, a Togruta and a human... no, Echani? R4's lens swiveled and focused slightly as it pondered the question for barely a second before it remembered that it didn't care and continued on past the females to look at the cooking area; it was like a home, in a starship!

— Who did this? If I had lips I'd kiss 'em! R4 whistled. It stopped, its conical headpiece swiveling back to take in the two girls. — No. Was it one of you? Can't be!

[Siyndacha Aerin]

Sindy had her own conceptions of creepy men, blights on her own memory, and shuddered light at the thoughts that surfaced with the explanation of this 'Sarin' individual, while considering the fact that she herself looked on others in a similar fashion, at times. She caught herself doing it then, watching Shuvin move about, mind picking at the sound of the younger woman's voice, trying to place the clues she found in it... and she looked away, just as a R4 droid intruded, blathering its amazement at the inside of the Alderaan, and asking who was responsible.

She looked again at the back of Shuvin's... well, all of her, then back to the droid, "I don't think she's your type," the half-echani deadpanned.

Her lips spread wide and split by a sliver, too narrow to show anything but shadow, and nothing of tooth. Droids weren't a common member of the society that had sprouted up on Ossus, at least not those that had some expression of personality. Aerin crossed her legs, having turned more towards the droid, and propped her head up against a fist, only to draw the index finger down her cheek to her bottom lip, which she tapped a couple times with the fingernail, before leaning forward, her elbows on her top thigh, hands dangling over the knee.

"And how did you get in here, my little friend?"

[Shuvin Undhi]

— How do you think, sister? It brrted at her. — The boarding ramp. Duh.

Its headpiece swivled to take in the rear end of another female, this time a Togruta, who was flicking the side of a small oven and turned to look at it and the white-haired female when she spoke.

"Oh, an R4!" the Togruta gasped. "Well arentcha a little cutie!"

— I like you.

"My name's Shuvin. What's your designation? Q-T?" she giggled.

— For you, I'll be Q-T. I'll be anything you want. R4 swivelled to take in the Echani girl and then devoted its attention to Shuvin once more. — Just keep up the sweet talking, sugar.

"I've wanted an astromech for a while to help out around here," Shuvin explained to Sindy, taking a small rag from the countertop and taking a knee to wipe the moisture off the droid's lens and headpiece. "Never managed to convince Ben the cost was worth it though. The ship's not that hard to take care of, honestly, but I would like some help with repairs that don't need bullet-pointed and illustrated instructions."

She snickered.

[Ben Merasska]

"Yeah, yuk it up," Ben grunted, entering the galley and brushing past the girls and the droid to grab a cup of caf from the small kettle that hung underneath one of the cupboards. "I'm not that bad."

Shuvin continued to snicker, only more loudly.

"Oy!" Ben snapped without heat. "There was just the one time."

Shuvin's snickers turned into small guffaws.

"...fine. Maybe twice. Maybe​."

[Palara Iscandar]

"Pride is usually not one of your vices, Ben," another voice joined in from the entrance to the galley. Palara leaned against the frame, obscuring the closing entrance ramp and the corridors leading to the cabins and further along the wing compartments. The twi'lek had a small smile that widened slightly on seeing Shuvin.

"You should be careful with zat leetle droid. It eez a leetle scoundrel."

— Little scoundrel?! Honey, I'm the sneakiest of the scoundrels you'll ever meet!

Shuvin cooed, distracting the droid from its egotistical rant.

"And 'oo is zis?" Palara asked, her gaze falling on the Echani girl.

"Oh. Sindy, Palara. Palara, Sindy." Ben gestured absently while frantically blowing on his caf to cool it down.

"A master of introduction as always, Ben," Palara sighed. She stepped forward and nodded in greeting to Sindy. "A pleasure to meet you."

[Siyndacha Aerin]

She gave attention to Shuvin's exposition of her desire that the droid's presence brought on, and subsequently the interplay caused by her words and the arrival of Ben Merasska in the galley. Sindy sat up, amusement at Ben's defensiveness bringing a touch of colour to her features, that remained a moment later when anotherunknown entered the room. This must be the 'she', and her comment on the droid found favour with the pale Aerin. Scoundrel, indeed. Had she any say in the matter, she would have this droid wiped, its personality having caused her interest in the R4 to drop several degrees. Ben's carelessness with social protocol was another matter entirely, that she only just resisted rolling her eyes at.

"And you," she replied, slipping from her seat to stand up straight, all five feet and seven inches of her, silver-blue eyes pinned on the twi'lek, "now, to properly introduce myself: I am Siyndacha Aerin-Trozky, of Cularin and Brentaal IV."

She tipped her head towards Palara, and raised it a moment later. It had been uncharacteristic of her to mention the connection to her father's family in introducing herself, but her issue was with the man, and not with the family that birthed him.

[Palara Iscandar]

Palara smiled, her brow quirking slightly at the introduction, but otherwise she retained her enigmatic poise and expression.

"Palara Iscandar," she returned with a dip of her own head. The Echani girl held herself with poise and what she assumed was a sense of pedigree.

"Ben Merasska," Ben interjected, causing Palara to roll her eyes. He shrugged.

"Shuvin Undhi!" Shuvin piped from her sitting position by the droid.

"Eet is no longer amuseeng, Shuvin," Palara said. The Togruta grinned and shrugged.

"I guess I'll go and start prepping for take off then," Ben said, drinking his no longer boiling caf. "Don't know why since we ain't in a hurry."

"I will 'ave a destination for you in a few moments," Palara said. "As soon as I can conveence zis droid to divulge ze information zat it 'olds."

Ben shrugged.

"Go for it. Now that everyone's here, I'm ready to leave, and there's nothing needs fixing right away, is there Shuvin?"

"Well, we could still use some good power converters and junctions for the motivator. We're still hemorrhaging power with the old ones, but it'll work and we don't have them right now anyway."

Palara turned and left the galley.

[Shuvin Undhi]

The oven chimed.

"There's the food!" Shuvin said brightly, standing and tossing the now dirtier rag on the counter top and pulling the containers out of the oven with some pads hanging by the appliance and taking them over to the table, before going back to the cupboards and taking some bowls and a ladle out and coming back to the table. "It ain't no Mishilin three star food of course, but I think it's pretty good."

She divvied up the stew and reached into one of the containers for bread.

"So Sindy — ah, hot! — what do you do, if it ain't pryin' to ask?"

[Siyndacha Aerin]

Her eyes followed Palara out of the room, but the rest of her settled back into a seat at the table; as much as something about the red-skinned twi'lek made her curious, she was hungry. Now, she hadn't eaten anything close to fine dining in a handful of years, at least, and wasn't bothered by any lack of refinement. All that mattered was the taste of it, and barring one or two bothersome textures, she ate most things. It smelled good, so there was that.

"Nothing, at the moment," she admitted, "I was, up until recent, a Jedi Padawan, and previous to that, an engineer for a small starshipwright."

A strange combination, for sure.

[Shuvin Undhi]

"A Jedi? Don't tell Ben. I get the feeling he doesn't like 'em too much. He won't push you out an airlock or nothin', though if you were a Jedi then I suppose that he'd be lucky to even think about doin' anything like that, but things tend to get complicated around Jedi."

Shuvin hummed to herself as she started eating, enjoying having someone new to talk to.

"So you were an engineer, eh? Wha'dja do? Design? QC?"

As she asked these other questions, Palara entered the galley again with a datapad and a set of connecting wires, and sat next to Shuvin, who bumped her arm good-naturedly before scooting over to give the Twi'lek room while she found the access jack and plugged the datapad in and folded out a small clear keyboard.