Not the Saska You're Looking For!

[Cassandra Saska]

Cassandra Saska used to feel tied down to her family's life and business back when they were shipping freight on the Curvy Lady. She'd been ticking the years down to her eventual escape to an Academy where she could learn not-Small Business Management or not-Accounting, so she could start to handle her own life and achieve true independence. Then, they'd been made unwitting couriers of contraband weapons, and her door of opportunity had snapped shut just as she was about to put her foot through it.

Now, she was trapped on a ship in a convoy of Rebels and their outlaw Jedi allies--and not even on a ship that mattered! She and her parents had been relegated to some dumpy little ship on the fringe of the convoy, where they'd likely be the first to die when they were found and shot into vapor by Imperial Star Destroyers. This on account of the Jedi considering Cassie and Carol useless and untrustworthy. At least, that's what Cassie had heard when Zeke had explained that the Jedi were being uptight over security because of "Sith"...whatever those were.

So Cassie found the only choice she could truly make to affect her life was what kind of instant breakfast ration she wanted to eat. No matter how many times she made it, it came out too thick or too runny, and no matter what flavor she chose they all tasted the same to her. She'd dumped some in a bowl with a randomly measured amount of water and sat down at their tiny folding dinner table to wait it out. Her mother came through and hugged her from the side.

"Cassie, I'm going up to the bridge to offer my help to the Captain. I can't just sit around and do nothing again today. Your father's gone to that main ship, Whaladon or whatever, to do Jedi stuff. We'll be back later. Try to have some fun, okay?"

"I'm not a child," Cassie whined petulantly as her mother kissed her good-bye. The door hissed open and shut, the heating unit beeped, and Cassie retrieved her thoroughly unappetizing morning meal and sat staring moodily into the steaming bowl. She'd exhausted all her entertainment. No Holonet, no Holovids, and she'd beaten all her datapad games. She scooped up some of the ration as their doorbuzzer rang. She slopped it back into the bowl and threw the spoon in after it.

"WHAT!?" she yelled by way of greeting. "Just...come in!"

[Siyndacha Aerin]

In response to the ‘WHAT!?’, she began:

“I’m looking for…”

But apparently that wasn’t loud enough or the voice on the other side of the door was deaf or impatient or something, because right then a ‘Just...come in!’ came on the coattails of the ‘WHAT!?’ and Sindy blinked, markedly. Most people answered their door. Most people were polite, mostpeople…

…and then the door wooshed open. The pixie-girl’s eyes snapped right through to the inside of the living quarters, quickly examined what was visually available to her from her current standpoint and gathering only one person (an unfamiliar one at that!) in her visual search, she blinked in mild surprise, yet again.

“I’m looking for mister Saska.”

She held her gaze steadily on what appeared to be the only girl in the room.

“And you don’t look like a mister at all, so… in that case, I must have the wrong room! Sorry!”

And with haste unusual for a simple mistake, haste more correct for embarrassment of a different kind, the eighteen-year-old Aerin girl turned heel and began walking away.

[Cassandra Saska]

Cassie sighed and ran a hand up into her blonde hair to support her head.

"Dad isn't here, he's on the Whalathing doing Jedi crap." She sighed aggravatedly as the door started to close on Sindy. "What did you want?" she yelled, mostly to make sure she was heard.

[Siyndacha Aerin]

Sindy turned heel even faster than she had originally and lunged to stop the door from closing completely, just barely succeeding in not having her hands chomped by the door. After a few seconds and considerable grunting on Sindy's part, the door relented and opened up again, taking the invitation of what was clearly both a rude individual as well as Mr. Saska's Daughter seriously and scooting inside the quarters before the door shut on her entire body.

"So you're Cassandra."

Sindy stated, rather correctly whilst folding her hands in front of her and smiling. It wouldn't do to be anything less than civil, even if the person you were faced with was rude.

"It's um... it's nice to finally meet you. I'm Siyndacha... or Sindy. Which is easier to not screw up. Mast... er, your dad's only (as far as I know) student. Oh and it's not the 'Whalathing'... it's the Whaladon."

[Cassandra Saska]

Cassie slowly ate a spoonful of her awful, so-called breakfast as Sindy wrestled her way back inside, all the better to disguise the smile at the other girl's discomfiture.

"Yyyyyeah, I knew that. I was trying to be silly." she said slowly, reluctantly scooping a little more of the liquid ration. She was being derisive and mean, but didn't want to say so. "You can call me Cassie. Guess its fair if we each have easy-to-say nicknames."

Her standing orders were to be nice to her father's Padawan, but Cassie didn't want to. Much as she wanted a friend, her dad's apprentice was not how she wanted to start. The warning had been that Sindy would be going everywhere with her Dad...that Cassie could "finally have that sister you wanted when you were four". Well, fourteen years later and Cassandra Nicole Saska was quite happy as an only child. Friends didn't count if you had to share your parents with them.

"And yeah, you're the only one. Mom and I aren't thrilled about having to have a bunch of tag-a-long Jedi interns about, so Dad agreed to just one." She let her spoonful of ration plop back into the bowl. Cassie wanted to tell Sindy where she could stick her activated lightsaber, but the blond-er, shorter-haired girl looked like a weaselly snitch. Cassie made an attempt at diplomacy.

"Sorry about yelling. Been a bad day already, for only being ten minutes in. What did you need?"

[Siyndacha Aerin]

Sindy drew her bottom lip in-between her teeth and ruffled a hand through her white-blonde hair. There were about a million things she could say to this girl, ranging from very polite to very much not-polite and she couldn’t exactly pick on her like she picked on Ben because she was certain it would not garner the same reaction on account of the fact that this girl didn’t immediately come across as a hide-saving chicken.

How in the wholewidegalaxy does Ben not know what a chicken is? Geez, I thought that was obvious to everybody!

“Well, to be honest, I was under the impression that there was supposed to be some form of training today, but that must have been a grievous miscommunication. Here I am and here he is not.”

She set her eyes back on the other blonde.

“Can I tell you something? Let me tell you something: your dad is a million times nicer than my dad. Like, phwoar. Major, major difference.”

[Cassandra Saska]

"Yeah, Dad's hard to piss off," Cassie agreed through a grimace at her latest bite of breakfast. "In eighteen years I haven't made him raise his voice yet. Which is something, I guess. Not that I like to regularly make trouble for him, just that I've never seen him lose his cool." Ok, now things felt awkward. She ate a little more to cover the silence, but couldn't suppress a negative criticism of the food. "Right, well, I dunno why he went over there, he was gone when I woke up. Maybe some emergency thing, or you guys were supposed to do a lesson later. Did you get the time wrong?"

[Siyndacha Aerin]

Sindy shook her head.

"Highly unlikely. The last time I got the time wrong on something was when I was still learning to read chronos."

The pixie-girl's eyes narrowed and her voice lowered conspiratorally.

"Maybe this is a sly trick. Maybe he meant to stick us together."

[Cassandra Saska]

Cassie blinked, then looked up at Sindy with naked surprise on her face.

"I'll bet he did! He's so sneaky sometimes! He used to politeness-judo people into doing stuff all the time when we still had a business! This is so like him! Because he's only direct when he's fighting with lightsabers, apparently." She put her hand on her forehead and elbow on the table to support herself and stirred her breakfast about, watching the spoon carve a trench and make a big ball. Too thick today. "He says you're gonna go everywhere with us. You're not moving in, are you?"

[Siyndacha Aerin]

It was Sindy's turn to blink and be surprised.

"Um... no? I mean, I'm pretty... no, in fact, almost absolutely certain that you and I would both know if such a thing were happening."

The Cularin girl's eyes shot briefly to the side, very briefly occupied with a thought. Then she looked back at Cassie again, her brow furrowing in query.

"You wouldn't happen to know a Ben Merasska, would you?"

[Cassandra Saska]

"Oh, thank goodness," Cassie said a little too enthusiastically. She was so happy not to have to deal with Sindy all the time. Her happiness and relief were short-lived as Ben came into the picture. "That coward was ready to sell us out to the Empire to get himself out a situation," she said with open disgust. "I think he only saved us at the end 'cause Dad showed up and killed the leader of the Stormtroopers he gave us up to. Dad made me apologize for freaking out on him, and maybe I did keep on grilling Ben about it longer than I needed to when we were safe, but I almost died. I think I have the right to be mad about that."

[Siyndacha Aerin]

Sindy grinned.

“Yes, that’s definitely Ben. What a chicken-butt!”

Her eyes rolled and she sighed.

“He came to retrieve me to bring me to the Wheel and between jumps we came across this derelict vessel and the Novgorod was there at the same time and Ben freaked out because… oh, I don’t even know and he was dodging their tractor beam left, right and centre and then they sent fighters after us and… oh, geez. He could have almost gotten us blown up by our own allies.”

The Jedi padawan shook her head.

“He’s an easy target, though. I swear I spent half the time in transit picking on him, due to intel from my cousin who knows him somehow… probably through his ex-wife’s sister, who is like the closest thing I have to a sister, since I have no siblings at all. She’s a really good engineer and right now she’s stationed on the Novgorod. I saw her and the captain giving each other googly-eyes.”

Sindy paused for a second.

"So, what do you do around here?"

[Cassandra Saska]

"Up until yesterday afternoon I was playing games on my datapad, but I beat them all a few times already so I'm tired of them. Right now I'm not doing anything. You guys don't get Holonet or anything so I can't do any of what I used to do back when I stuck to the butt of Dad's business. Got no books to read 'cause those datapads got left behind in the attack that caused us to have to come here in the first place." She ate some more of her crappy ration. "I can't even eat decent food. This sucks, and not in a good way. I hate that we even have to be here. I wish things had stayed the same."

[Siyndacha Aerin]

"At least you're alive."

Not that those words were any consolation whatsoever and she knew it.

"At least you're relatively safe and not in the clutches of the mightily evil Galactic Empire."

Those words weren't much better either. Sindy's head cocked to the side and she observed Cassie for the briefest of moments before a look of surprise flashed up on her face.

"Say, I bet I could teach you a whole ton of things. Prove you're not dangerous. Help you become what might pass for useful in this place. My brain is chock-full of mechanical stuff, intergalactic law, language and... uh, other things."

She eyed the other girl's ration with a slight measure of distaste.

"Maybe even get you something better than... tree pulp soup. And as for things still being the same, I wouldn't be here if Papa Marezius was still alive."

[Cassandra Saska]

Cassie sighed. Sindy was trying to be helpful, and she knew it, but nothing the Jedi girl had said was of any consolation, and she had her doubts about how much weight a Jedi intern had with the higher-ups. Presumably her Dad had gone to do all of what Sindy was now discussing, so she decided to put her faith in him--what little of it she had left.

"Okay," she said, sighing again. It bore none of the hallmarks of acceptance or gratitude or acknowledgement. The word hung worthlessly in the air like the filler it turned out to be. "Who's your Papa Marezius?" Cassie didn't care about it in particular, but felt like Sindy had too many points on her, already. The platinum-blonde Padawan already knew who Cassie was and had apparently attended a ton of formal schooling. Cassie wasn't gifted in the Force, to her knowledge, had the most basic of home-school education, and had lost her chance at Academy about a month and a half before it was time to go there. She didn't like feeling small this way. She wanted to know who she was dealing with. "That was your Dad, or your Grandpa, or...?"

[Siyndacha Aerin]

"Maternal Grandfather."

Sindy looked away and cupped her elbows with her hands.

"My own father has wanted to be free of me since my mother passed when I was two, but Papa being a Jedi in a long male-line family of Jedi was able to have some sway with my Father. Father blamed me because she took her life due to postpartum depression. He still saw fit to train me to follow in his footsteps, as a lawyer for the family, his family..."

She turned her eyes back to her master's daughter.

"...did I mention my paternal grandfather is the head of the mob? Anyway, when Papa died, Father wasted no time in ridding himself of me. Practically paid me to leave once Papa was no longer standing in his way. My uncle and cousin offered to take me in, but that was still too close for him."

She smiled then.

"I'm not bitter. I might be considered crazy by some people, being a Jedi instead of raking in the credits as a lawyer, but it's better this way."

[Cassandra Saska]

"Damn, that's really awful!"

Cassie hadn't expected this, not from someone so bubbly and hyperactive as Sindy. Well, then, that explained the heavy education on galactic law and all the rest. She couldn't imagine being in a family that didn't want you, but made you do like they did, anyway. It seemed an awful double-bind to Cassie. We don't want you to be with us or do what we do, but do it anyway. We hate you for it. "Just...wow. I'm so sorry." She realized suddenly that she meant it and went to change the subject. The daughter of Saska wasn't ready to dispense pity today.

"Hang on, if you're a lawyer, why are you working with machines? Is that your sister or whoever on Novgorod that showed you that?"

[Siyndacha Aerin]

A small giggle escaped from Sindy, then a rupture of laughter.

Oh, gods... you're going to think..."

Stifling her laughter for several moments, the laugh and giggles eventually calmed to the point where she could communicate her answer to Cassie's question.

"...well. Um. Let's see, here."

She folded her hands in front of herself once again and cleared her throat. In deadly seriousness, she said:

"The machines, they speak to me."

A sly smile slipped into one corner of her mouth.

"Papa taught me a little and let me dissect a lightsaber when I wasn't even ten yet."

Then the other corner of her mouth perked.

"Then I learned to understand Verpine and they were most of what I knew but... the fact that machines are basically living things to me makes me like a Verpine, if not better. Or worse, depending on how you look at it."

[Cassandra Saska]

Cassie knew Verpines. After a bad run-in with pirates, a crew of Verpine technicians had made the Curvy Lady serviceable again, and they'd done in it in an insanely short amount of time. Cassie had a lot of respect for Verpines, and the fact that Sindy could make this claim made her forcibly stop some of that respect from transferring to her. She sighed and sagged in the chair.

"Machines talk to you," she repeated, entirely deadpan. "Not like a protocol droid talks, but like...droid whisperer. Is that what I'm to understand?"

Saying it out loud like that made it sound absurd, and Cassie stayed comfortably inside her little well of suspicion towards Sindy that let her hold the other girl at arm's length. At the same time, though, Cassie burned with jealousy. She couldn't think of a single thing she could do so uniquely or well.

[Siyndacha Aerin]

Siyndacha deadpanned in return:

"Yes."

Then in all seriousness:

"More aptly, a technomancer."

A small, slightly furled and confused look appeared on her face.

"Outside of the Jedi, it just makes everyone single me out as a weirdo." Then she smiled fondly. "Except my cousin Ordon, the 'handsome social butterfly' that all the girls ogle dreamily..."

Sindy rolled her eyes and made a disgusted face.

"...thanks to him I know more theoretically about sex and pleasure than I would ever have wanted to know."