Ask [Vaynai] The Other Side of Paradise

[Malou D'Amaris]

Vaynai, Chorlian sector, S-4
Mid-morning at the Vaynai spaceport

This was the second—no, third—time Malou had been assigned onto one of these intelligence missions with an acolyte. First on Denon, then on Bastion, and now she was here on Vaynai. The difference between those missions and this one was that she had already met the acolyte she was working with. Though Malou didn't remember much of that last party on Serenno, she did remember Zoella. They'd danced and introduced themselves. Now, almost a year later, they were out on a mission together. Malou hoped her initial impression of her at that party would remain the same. She remembered the girl having very pretty blonde hair, among other things.

Malou was arriving separately, so when her ship entered the atmosphere she sent a ping to whatever communication device Zoella was using to let the girl know she'd be there soon. They were set to meet at the Vaynai spaceport where Zoella should already be waiting. The champion was arriving only an hour after Zoella would've been scheduled to get there, which was good timing considering the difficulties of space travel. Within minutes of entering the atmosphere, the Serennian was exiting her ship.

The blindfolded Sith quickly spotted the waiting Zoella and lifted her hand to wave at the acolyte as she made her way over. As per usual, Malou was dressed in an outfit that was equally casual and quietly expensive. Before she could reach the girl, a man stepped in between them and began to try to sell Malou a room at one of the world's various resorts.

tag: @llamallove

 

[Zoella Dorran]

Zoella Dorran had been sitting on the same stiff, uncomfortable bench for the past half hour trying to pass the time by counting the arriving and departing travelers, but it was hardly an enthralling pastime. The Vaynai Spaceport wasn't exactly what you would call a bustling spaceport this morning. It was nothing like Mos Eisley or Coruscant, which was surprising considering the planet's resorts and oceans. Maybe it was the off-season or something.

The teenager had been milling about the spaceport for the past two hours and had run out of distractions, reduced now to the age old recreation known as people watching. She'd already raided the vending machines, stared out the viewports at the ocean, lost a few credits to a malfunctioning lugjack machine, and not-so literally beaten off some salesman.

Under different circumstances, she might have leaned back and taken a nap, but she was too nervous for rest right now. This was one of her first missions without her master by her side— her first "solo" outing so to speak. She didn't want to let Sah'ra Ryun down, and she didn't want to let Malou D'Amaris down either. Perhaps most of all, she didn't want to let herself down. Even if this was probably an insignificant mission in the grand schemes of the Sith Empire, she needed to prove something to herself.

Green eyes wandered over the spaceport, settling on the blindfolded Champion as she approached with a wave. Zoella returned the gesture, relieved to finally see a familiar face. She jumped to her feet and clambered toward the Sith, halted only by the salesman that stepped between the pair and began rattling off his well-rehearsed sales pitch. It was the same salesman from earlier.

"Hey, buddy," Zoella cut in with absolutely no sense of decorum. Her mother would have died right then and there of secondhand embarrassment had she witnessed how quickly the teenager's manners had deteriorated over the months since their separation. "Do you mind? I thought I told you to scram already?"

With that, the Acolyte turned toward Malou. "Hungry?" she asked with a sheepish smile, offering the Champion an unopened bag of Calamari Crisps from her backpack. Just one of the goodies she had purchased from the vending machines and one of the few she hadn't already eaten.

@lizziie

 

[Malou D'Amaris]

"Thanks," chuckled Malou as she watched the man sulk off to find a better victim. "A bit," was her answer to the question. "Anything worth checking out here?" By here she meant the spaceport, as it was generally a toss-up whether they had good restaurants or not. Searching quickly, Malou spotted what seemed to be a sushi restaurant past security. "There's a sushi place down the way. Let's try that." Hopefully Zoella liked seafood.

The two would make their way over and get seated. They would receive their food fairly quickly as the place itself wasn't all that busy at the moment. While breaking apart her chopsticks, Malou would ask, "So did you get assigned to this mission or did you volunteer for it?"

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[Zoella Dorran]

"Not really," Zoella shrugged, jerking her head toward the lugjack machines that lined a distant corner of the spaceport. "Those lugjack machines are the most interesting thing here, and they're busted." Zipping her backpack closed, the Acolyte chuckled, shoving her hands into the pockets of her jacket. "I was tempted to try and fix them, but I'm not exactly what you'd call mechanically inclined."

Growing up on Arkanis, Zoella's diet had consisted almost entirely of seafood. Now that she was with the Sith Empire, her diet was much more varied and consisted of whatever she could afford at the time. Some people's comfort food was chocolate or waffles or soup, but Zoella's was seafood. It reminded her of her home, of her childhood. That was why she was hesitant to try a spaceport sushi restaurant where the food was probably mediocre at best, but she wasn't about to object when Malou suggested it.

"Sushi? Sounds great," the teenager agreed right away, despite her reservations.

Surprisingly, the sushi was better than mediocre—it was actually pretty good. Vending machine snacks had done little to satiate the Acolyte's hunger, so she didn't hesitate to tear into her food. "I volunteered," she would answer the Champion's question through a mouthful of food. Swallowing, she admitted, "I'm trying to impress my Master. I haven't exactly done a stellar job of that so far."

To be more accurate, Zoella had figuratively and literally fallen on her face in front of her Master. Twice.

"What about you? I guess now that you're a Champion you get to pick your own missions?"

@lizziie

 

[Malou D'Amaris]

Malou let out a long sigh. "Kind of? I can say no but it's expected that I will go." Considering she'd spent the first few months of her new role as champion avoiding saying yes, she felt obligated—no, pressured—to take these missions now. "Imperial Intelligence is really- has been really shit about debriefing for these things though, so I find them annoying." All Malou had been told about this particular mission was that she and Zoella were trying to seed some animosity between the uber-rich and the poor here on Vaynai. From there the Sith would be able to swoop in and take advantage of the unrest. Kick out the rich, place "commoners" in as puppets, the whole sha-bang.

Or, something like that.

"Your master is Sah'ra, right?" asked the Miralukan in between rolls of sushi. Sah'ra was one of the other lords of Avillion, though the two had never really spoken much. It was more of a rhetorical question than anything. "I wonder when we'll start encroaching on the northwest," Malou thought aloud. "Ansion is so close by." With a shrug, Malou went back to snacking on her sushi.

"Did they give you much to go on? Anything more than 'cause unrest?"

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[Zoella Dorran]

"Sounds complicated," Zoella chuckled, absentmindedly turning her chopsticks over in her fingers. "It must be a little disappointing, becoming a Champion but still taking orders. How long have you been with the Sith anyway?"

Maybe now wasn't the best time for personal questions, but Zoella was curious. The Acolyte was still floundering, struggling to find her place within the Sith Empire. Malou was someone she could look up to, someone she could aspire to be. They weren't far apart in age, and yet Malou had accomplished so much more than Zoella had. She was leaps and bounds ahead of the blonde, already a Sith Champion, just like Zoella's Master.

If Zoella was lucky, she would learn a thing or two from Malou and return to Sah'ra Ryun more competent than when she left.

"Yeah, Sah'ra Ryun. She's.... a lot," was all Zoella would say, still unsure where she stood with her Master. Especially now, after that embarrassing display on Onderon. The Acolyte forced a smile, determined that this mission would be different.

"Cause unrest was about the gist of my briefing,too. If the rest of the planet is anything like this spaceport, it shouldn't be too difficult. It's absolutely depressing in here. Maybe if we walk around, explore the city a bit we'll get a better feel for the atmosphere."

@lizziie

 

[Malou D'Amaris]

How long had she been Sith? "Uh...about three years, I think?" She had been fifteen when she first drafted that letter to Artorgias, and she was eighteen now. Now that she thought about it, her time in the Sith hadn't been all that much so far. What were three-some years in comparison to those who had grown up in it?

Malou felt justified when Zoella said she hadn't gotten much from her briefing, either. So it's not just me, that's...good, I guess. But, she was right. It probably wouldn't be too difficult to plant seeds of class conflict. The challenge would be finding out the right way to go about it. She certainly had ideas, but Malou knew she would be hindered by the fact she'd grown up in an aristocracy. She would need to be careful not to say anything insensitive.

"Yeah, let's do that." Malou stood up, placed some credits on the table, and prepared to leave. Once Zoella was ready to follow, she would lead the acolyte out of the restaurant and in the direction of the city. It actually took them quite a bit to get down into the city—about half a standard hour of walking. There was transportation available to the hotels and resorts, but nothing was available to get to the city. Malou wore comfortable shoes, so she didn't mind, but she was a little irked by it.

Once they got down to the city, it was a much different sight than the spaceport. The buildings were of the same neutral, organic architecture, but they were obviously old and the place was far from clean. It was much more lively than the spaceport though. The streets were busy enough, and there was a group of about four kids chasing each other around. They were quickly making their way toward Malou and Zoella, even bumping into them a bit as they raced by.

"Some place," Malou muttered.

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[Zoella Dorran]

Outside of the spaceport, Vaynai was deceivingly affluent. The city's main promenade stretched for miles across island mesas, the Outer Rim world's boundless oceans to one side and its towering high-rise apartments and luxury resorts on the other. Alongside the paved walkway, the city's horticulturists had planted a perfect combination of vegetation—pink geraniums, flowering jasmine, and ornamental grasses.

It was breathtaking, the enjoyment of it all minimized only by the consideration of Malou's perspective. Zoella couldn't help but wonder if the Sith Champion could see the wind rustling through the flowers and the grass, the waves rolling peacefully onto sugar white beaches, and the morning sunlight's reflection on skyscraper windows. Zoella wasn't sure how Malou's sight worked, but she hoped the beauty of this place was not lost on her. If it was, at least Malou would be able to enjoy the wind on her face and the smell of the ocean carried on its wings.

Life on the lower levels of the island was a completely different story. Tourists that never ventured past resorts and tourist attractions atop the mesas would never know the truth, and Zoella had to assume that was the intention behind forcing the impoverished to live in the underbelly of the city. To call it a squalor was a description too kind.

There were poverty-stricken neighborhoods on Zoella's home planet of Arkanis too, but she had never seen anything like this. The teenager felt out of place, as if this was the last place in the galaxy she had ever expected to be. As the King's daughter, she had visited the poor on missions of mercy, but now she walked among them as nothing more than one of them. Equals. As far as the rest of the galaxy was concerned, she was not a King's daughter. Zoella had not yet grown accustomed to her change in station, try as she might.

She couldn't agree more with Malous assessment of the lower city, however—"some place." Their mission was to cause unrest, and they had certainly ventured to the right place for that. These people were aching for change.

"Listen," Zoella began in a quiet voice, twisting her wrists in diffidence. The teenager was unsure of her own plan but determined to be more than a bump on a log. Not this time. "I might have an idea. While I was waiting for your transport to arrive, I watched the harvester ships travel the coast. Vaynai's main attraction might be the resorts, but the backbone of their economy is the aquaculture industry." In that way, it was not unlike her own home planet. "If we could sneak aboard the harvesters and sabotage them, it could get the wheels turning."

Green eyes scanned the street, just to ensure no one was listening in on their conversation. "The aristocrats won't be making credits, and neither will the people. They'll be at each other's throats, too—possibly even blaming each other for the vandalism. Not to mention food supplies will take a major hit. No one is agreeable on an empty stomach."

@lizziie

 

[Malou D'Amaris]

"Sabotage..." Malou mumbled the word to herself as she continued to walk alongside Zoella. "I like it." There was a bit of a problem with that idea though; neither of them looked like they belonged here, so sneaking aboard a harvester would be difficult.

"Do you know where these harvester ships take off? We're going to need to find the warehouses they get their supplies from." The Miralukan began to slow down until she came close to a stop. They were much further into the city now than they should be if their plan was to sabotage a supply chain. "We're going to need to look the part if we want to get close enough to do damage."

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[Zoella Dorran]

"That is a problem," Zoella conceded, chewing on her lip in thought. The teenager came to an abrupt stop alongside the Champion, narrowly avoiding a collision with the four rambunctious children scampering down the street. After a moment, she added, "But solvable. They're bound to keep extra uniforms at the docks. If not, we'll just have to steal some."

The implication was obvious—subdue a couple of workers, tie them up, stow them somewhere out of sight, and steal their clothing. Zoella had never taken the life of another sentient being, and she didn't intend for today to be the first. Someday, naturally, but not today. Especially not the life of some unsuspecting fisherman trying to make an honest living. There were others far more deserving of such a punishment, some of them acquaintances of her own.

"The real question is customs officers or deckhands?" the Acolyte voiced, considering their options for a possible disguise. "I like the idea of customs officers, but I suppose we're a little young for the role." She chuckled. Oh, well. They'd figure that out later.

As for their destination, Zoella was confident that she could locate it. The fishing industry was practically the lifeblood of her home planet. "Docks are considered an eyesore, especially on a planet like this. They want to impress the tourists and give the impression that life is nothing but sunshine and rainbows, so the fishing harbors will be out of sight of the resorts. Not to mention all the butchering has a smell that... tends to linger."

Zoella spun around, staring back the way they'd come before turning to face Malou again. "So we should head this way." She gestured toward their right, toward the distant sound of the ocean.

@lizziie