Ask In Muddied Waters

[Guinevere Beck]

High Orbit, Dagobah​

The rusty old freighter had been holding together a lot better than she had expected, by the time it jumped out of hyperspace there had been a sum total three issues that she had to fix. Things had been going surprisingly well in the slightly illegal field trip she was taking. It had been surprisingly easy to steal the ship, there hadn't been anyone watching it, and the ignition chip and activate codes were all in the bridge when she had snuck on board. And no one had hailed her as she had lifted from the Temple's reserve hangar where the ship had been sitting. That really should have warned her that her luck was bound to run out.

But it was only when the ship jumped out of hyperspace that she realized just how much trouble she was in. One look was all it took to tell her that she was nowhere near where she was supposed to be. She had tricked the droid in the library to plot a course for Coruscant for her, but the planet in front of her was most definitely not Coruscant. A few quick key strokes brought up the information she needed. Somehow, she had landed on Dagobah. Leaning back in the pilot's seat, she stared at the console in stunned silence. Dagobah was out in the middle of nowhere, how in the Force had she ended up out here??

That was when her luck went from bad to worse, as a series of lights started flashing on the console, and she realized why the ship had been so easy to steal. The engine had somehow survived till now, but the thing was dying on her, and fast. A quick glance told her that things weren't too bad, the time to really panic would have been if warning sirens had started blaring around her, this was probably something minor enough for her to fix. Jumping out of the seat, she ran for the engineering bay, praying that it was something that she could fix, not being particularly confident in her own skills as a mechanic. And it was with these distracting thoughts in her head, as she was running through the ship's tight corridors, that her foot caught on something and she went crashing to the floor.

"What the kriff!" She exclaimed as she looked back to see what she had stumbled over, and stopped before a string of choice profanities escaped her lips. It was a foot, one lonesome foot poking out from behind some boxes. Pushing herself to her feet, she walked over to get a better look, and found there was indeed a body at the other end of the foot. Sighing in relief that her momentary worry of having stolen a ship with dismembered appendages on board had been unfounded, she bent to pull the cloak that was draped over the body. She recognized the face immediately, the one who had tossed the flower-boy into the sea on Chandrilla. Thelian, the Sith puncher. She hadn't wanted anyone else to be on this little escapade of hers, and most definitely not him given what she had seen of him on Chandrila. That was enough to irritate her, but the fact that he was still snoring softly after having sent her crashing to the floor when she ought to be fixing the ship straight up pissed her off.

"Get up! Now!" She accompanied the words with a kick aimed at his outstretched foot, and would follow with more till he joined her in the land of the living. "What the hell are you doing here?!"

And as if on cue, that was when the alarms started blaring all around them.

@Altaris

 

[Thelian Lsai]

Thelian was just trying to take a nap, man. While Guinevere had plotted her elaborate scheme to steal the ship and pilot from Yavin to Coruscant, the Echani had – surprisingly – a far more innocent reasons for being sprawled out on the ground, conked out behind some cargo crates.

As was his habit now-a-days, the Echani had spent the better part of an entire day cooped up within the temple training yard. Chandrila, and everything that had happened on that beach, was still fresh - conflicting emotions still lingering at the forefront of the Echani’s mind.

Naturally, it brought him to his default method of catharsis – venting all of his stress and frustrations until exhaustion finally washed over him. Just his luck, this was timed right as the other Padawans were having one of their insufferable little parties within the dormitories. Faced with the prospect of trying to sleep through the gathering – or worse yet, participate – Thelian promptly decided to find somewhere else to lay his head down for a few hours.

In his defense, the rusty old freight didn’t even look like it was in any kind of condition to fly. He hadn’t thought, for even a second, that someone might be eyeing the vessel – and thus saw really no problem with sneaking inside for a quick snooze. It was hardly the first time he had snuck aboard and slept on the floor of a ship.

Hours would pass, and Thelian was entirely oblivious to everything going on around him – up until the moment Guinevere suddenly arrived on the sceen with her outbursts. Thelian very clearly didn’t hear the girl at first, soft little snores blissfully filling the air, right through her verbal fury. It wasn’t until the girl stared kicking him that the Echani began to rouse.

“Hey..” He mumbled groggily, attempting to shoo the disturbance away and roll back over. When the kicks continued, Thelian finally cracked over his eyes – silvers narrowing harshly upon the pissed-off padawan. “Hey! Quit fuckin’ kicking me!” He snapped, glaring at the girl. His expression quickly softened, blinking a few times as realization started to smack him in the face. She hadn’t been aboard the ship when he decided to take a nap.

“Who the hell are you?” He said bluntly, blinking a few times.

At that moment, another realization hit the Echani. He could feel that the ship was moving, and the gentle rumble of the engines indicated that they were definitely not back on Yavin. “Uhh.. Where the fuck are we?”

His attention, of course, then proceeded to snap down the hall as alarms began to bare – sufficiently rousing the Echani the rest of the way from slumber. Silver eyes then flicked back to the female padawan, asking his last question.

“What the fuck did you do?”

@Wit

 

[Guinevere Beck]

"What the fuck did I do?" She replied instinctively, reacting as she always did to blame of any sort, her brain automatically going to deflection and the simple act of passing the blame onto someone else. In this instance, him. "What the fuck did you do?"

Her brain was working at the speed of light, like it only did when she was trying to bullshit her way out of or into trouble. Why was it that when it came to put her head to any use in classes she somehow ended up having to fight to just stay awake? As always she pushed such thoughts away as the bullshit express took hold, this time coming up with a tale on the fly to put this all on ol' punchy.

Oh yeah, she knew who he was. Wonderboy himself, the one who punched Darth Raze. God damn jackass, she hated overachievers like him, making life hell for everyone else. If she had to hear from one more instructor that she should try to be more like him, to remember who brave sweet little Thelian was in the face of the Sith, she would take their suggestion to follow his lead a little too literally and punch someone. And all of that acted as fuel to drive her creativity, and the words just started flowing out of her mouth.

"Do you have any idea how long the engineering kids have been working on this ship? Thirty seven flight tests with no issue, and then you walk in and do god knows what and everything falls apart." She would turn away with a huff, suppressing a smile as she started walking towards the engine bay once more. "Come on, you're helping me fix this mess," she shouted, looking over her shoulder at him, "unless you wanna be stuck on Dagobah for the rest of your life!"

@Altaris

 

[Thelian Lsai]

Thelian narrowed his eyes harshly upon Guinevere, launching silver daggers the moment she started berating him. While she yelled, the Echani pushed himself to his feet – glaring down at her while his arms crossed over his chest. The Echani had quite literally done nothing but sleep in his little corner, and now he had to deal with the pint-sized padawan trying to pin all of her failures upon him.

Great.

He didn’t even know who the girl was, anyway. Thelian vaguely remembered seeing her back on Chandrila, but this was the first time they had actually interacted in any real capacity. Even still, the Echani didn’t need to know who the padawan was to know what she was trying to do. For once in his life, Thelian was actually innocent, and there was zero chance he was about to be the fall guy for any of this.

“I walked in here and took a fuckin’ nap.” He said flatly. “Right there in that spot. I’m assuming your shrimp ass is the one that thought it was a bright fucking idea to put this hunk of junk into the air and take it for a joyride.”

He shook his head, keeping his arms folded over his chest when she demanded his help. “The fuck I am.” He declared decisively. “You broke it, you fix the shit. And there isn’t a chance in hell I’m going to put my fingerprints on a damn thing in that engine bay.” Nevertheless, the Echani followed behind when the girl began to make her way to the engine bay. He really couldn’t go back to sleep at this point.

He blinked a few times. ”Dagobah..?” The Echani couldn’t help the exceptionally dumbfounded expression that was left on his face at that moment. “How the fuck do you mess up so bad, that you go from Yavin to Dagobah unintentionally? What did you do, press every button on the nav computer and hope for the fuckin’ best?” Thelian hissed. Never mind the irony of that statement, considering that is exactly what he had done back on that freighter with Zana.

@Wit

 

[Guinevere Beck]

She was about to fess up, the alarms making her worry that it might be best to just get his help and try to fix whatever was wrong with the ship instead of wasting time trying to avoid the blame. But then he went and declared that it was all her fault for taking the ship out on a joyride. She wasn't going to take this crap from her, even if it was her shrimp ass that had landed them in this mess. Letting out an angry bah at him making her use the term shrimp-ass to address herself, she curled her fists and came to a stop.

"You know what, I don't have time for this." She spun around on a heel to glare up at him, realizing once more how tall he was. Probably not getting enough air that high up, leaving his brain starved. "We don't have time for this...this mess that you got us into!!"

She unclenched her fists and gave him one last glare before walking to the console on the wall besides him, beginning to type commands to bring up a diagnostic. "If you must know, the jump was supposed to take us to Coruscant. I am on a...on a procurement run for one of the Knights." She left it at that, not wanting to give him more details about her little side business. Though given his reputation she was surprised he hadn't tried to buy anything from her, maybe he was into more hard stuff and what she sold was just too vanilla for his tastes. Who wants Twinkies and Wookiee-Claws when you're used to getting high on spice.

"I think I can patch this up," she finally spoke up as she studied the diagnostic report, "yeah, pretty sure this isn't too bad as the whining makes it out to be. I think the engineering kids just put that in to scare away anyone from touching their stuff." She punched a few more commands before giving up and punching the console with a fist, which finally shut the alarms down. "Don't tell them I did that though, I think the Twi'lek will kick my shrimp ass. So, good news, bad news. Good news is this it totally fixable. Bad news, we gotta land to make the repairs." She left the rest unsaid, the way she said it making it more than obvious where she meant for them to land. The ship might not be totally broken down, but there was no way it was making another jump, they had to land on Dagobah.

She had heard the stories, how Master Yoda had exiled himself to Dagobah, and the planet had driven him crazy, making him talk all weird for the rest of his days. She didn't want that, she was a businesswoman, if she started talking like the crinkly old frog she's loose all her clients.

"Okay I'm going to be real with you," she finally spoke up, the thought of speaking like Yoda for the rest of her life scaring the anger away, "I really don't want to be stuck on that stinking swamp, and I most definitely don't want to be stuck talking like Yoda, no matter how unlikely the stories might be. And I don't think bickering over who messed up what will help. So...truce?"

@Altaris