Showdown at Junction

[Shuvin Undhi]

"All right now, I'm gonna make a guess here," Shuvin said, leaning back in her seat and giving him an almost pitying look, "and say you just tried to smile. I could be wrong; maybe you just found an especially bitter part of your tea or something."

She leaned forward again.

"Do me a favor though and don't smile unless it comes natural to you, hey?" She grinned. "If you have to try, it ain't worth the effort."

She drank some more of her tea, and flagged the server down and held up her empty cup.

"Alderaan's a Ghtroc-720. Third generation, one of the last ships off the line. We've overhauled her so much though she only looks one on the outside. I'd bet she's just as fast as the Millenium Falcon was, with better shields! We've got better passenger capacity than stock without sacrificing cargo space, and we're better equipped to do a whole load of things out in the black."

She stopped when the server dropped by with a glass of dark brown tea with small orbs suspended within.

"Ah, sorry, I tend to ramble when it comes to my baby," she said.

[Abarai Loki]

"Ah, sorry, I tend to ramble when it comes to my baby," she said.

"No. It's fine. I find it interesting. Honestly."

With each stunted statement, Loki attempted more earnest sincerity. Inwardly, he winced at the 'honestly,' for it seemed to unravel the knot of words in which he'd tied himself up. It wasn't that he was uninterested - quite the opposite - but, in his quiet desperation to appear genuine - normal, even - perhaps he'd pushed himself too far. Shuvin was right: if it didn't come naturally, don't do it at all.

"Sorry," he huffed, exasperated with himself, "I'm not impolite. I just seem that way."

For a second, he lost himself in his tea cup. Any other idiotic words that could wander into the open were imprisoned behind a firmly-clamped jaw. He liked ships; he didn't have to convince Shuvin of this, he just had to talk about them. It wasn't that complicated.

"I once apprenticed under a mechanic aboard an old YT-666," he confessed, wondering if his brief stint of poking around Layla with Cirr could ever be considered an apprenticeship. "I was much smaller back then, and the first thing I had to do was crawl inside the superstructure of the ion drive. The mechanic was convinced it needed recalibrating, but instead, I found a dead mynock."

This time, he smiled before he realised it. Just the flicker of a fond memory, passing like a light across his face, before it faded from view. His gaze followed it, through the window, into the spaceport below. A shimmer of light, rippling like water over polished plastoid. They moved in formation, and with purpose; their weapons held aloft like banners. The smile was extinguished, and his face creased in thought.

"Do you know who they are?" He directed Shuvin with a nod, "They don't look like airport security to me."

[Shuvin Undhi]

Shuvin smiled herself at the nostalgic expression that creased the dimples at the sides of Loki's mouth.

"Now that's better," she murmured into her tea.

"Do you know who they are?" He directed Shuvin with a nod, "They don't look like airport security to me."

The Togruta glanced outside.

"No clue," she replied, her brows coming together slightly. "Though if Cap'n Ben sees them, he'll probably panic and think someone's after him again."

She almost laughed when she turned back to Loki.

"Now to be fair, the Cap'n isn't completely off his chair. We've had a few close calls."

Her face fell into a sad, wistful expression for a moment, like a cloud's shadow passing over the ground, and just as quickly.

"But whatever they're prowlin' round for, it ain't gonna make anyone happy, I'm guessing. We should just sit still and see what happens, yeah?"