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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Before - Legends Crash Course- Repost (Action/Adventure Non-JA OC) *completed* 6/15

Discussion in 'Fan Fiction- Before, Saga, and Beyond' started by Lilith Demodae, Jan 2, 2004.

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  1. Lilith Demodae

    Lilith Demodae Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 1, 1999
    I'm in the newsletter?! Whoa. Cool. Where?! *ahem* Sorry. I'll try and control my desire for a bigger feedback buzz. Nope, sorry, a junkie's gotta have her fix...
     
  2. Lilith Demodae

    Lilith Demodae Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 1, 1999
    Okay, here's the next bit, ladies.



    ________________________


    My messenger service finished and the men in question sent on their way, I passed by the table where Sloan and a few others were playing cards. "You gonna try and sit in on the meeting?" I asked him, jerking my head at the closed door to Death's office.

    "Nah," he shrugged. "Shael got all the bossy genes, I got all the lazy ones," he replied with an impudent grin.

    " ?Nuf said," I agreed. I wasn't big on that being in charge stuff myself and couldn't blame him in the least for not wanting to follow in his big brother's shoes.

    Shaking my head, I ruffled his hair and began to amble slowly back toward my computers, but a hint of motion caught my eye. Mason was still sitting in front of the main monitor and was now tapping out short commands every so often. My first reaction was outrage. //How dare he use my computer without asking me first!// I don't mean to say that I'm jealous of my computers and don't want anyone but me to use them ... but I'm jealous of my computers. And I don't want anyone other than me to use them. There's no telling what some silly, wannabe slicer might do to my babies when I'm not around to protect them. It just hadn't occurred to me that a polite, well-trained Jedi like Mason might do more than look over my shoulder. If it had occurred to me, I still may not have turned the keylock on, but I would have been prepared for the trill of fear and worry that rippled down my spine at seeing someone else, anyone else, tapping commands into my computer.

    Outrage and worry trickled away and I just stood there for a moment. Now my curiosity was piqued. I just had to know what he was doing. Much as I trusted him, I didn't want to let him know that I was watching. He might just stop whatever it was he was doing. So instead of going right back, I turned from my original course and angled across the main floor, heading toward the maintenance bay. Conveniently enough, Shael's ride was parked closest to the computer bank, so I plopped down on the permacrete and began slowly extracting the micro-computer that controlled the air/fuel mix. From that spot I had a near perfect vantage point from which to watch the Jedi at work. I was even at enough of an angle that I could make some pretty good guesses at what commands he was typing in.

    The map was still up on the screen, still blocked off into the various colored territories, and still speckled with the red dots of the crime report locations. Mason had added several blue dots. He worked deliberately and with confidence, but slowly, like he was familiar enough with computers, but not with this particular configuration. His thick brown hair fell forward, obscuring his face as he worked, so I read the muscles of his back, the set of his shoulders, the tension in his arms, and the slight hesitations in the movements of his fingers.

    I glanced away for a moment to hook up an adapter from my datapad to the mix controller. Shael really did want me to check the program for bugs, since he'd been having a few problems with it recently, so it made a very convenient excuse. When I glanced back up Mason had shifted back in his seat, as if to get a better overall view of the map. I could see the scattering of blue dots better now, but I still couldn't figure out what they meant, or why he cared. Since he did care, I figured it was something I might want to look into a little closer.

    My attention was so fully on Mason and his actions that I missed the approach of Killek. Only when he stepped up to Mason and glanced around to check for me, did I finally notice him. I swore savagely when he laid a warning hand on the Jedi's shoulder.

    "Hey man," his voice carried to me easily, despite the other noises, "you'd better not let Crash catch you fiddling with her toys. I know she's your sponsor, but she's like to take your head off before she asks any questions." His reddish mop shook ruefully. "It's nev
     
  3. Shaindl

    Shaindl Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 18, 2002
    Cuddling and the stars? **snort** Sure. :D

    Hmm, what was Qui doing with her computers? Sounds intriguing and I'm looking forward to finding out. I think the conversation between Crash and Shael could be interesting and it might put her off finding out immediately.

    Great job, Lilith!

    Shaindl
     
  4. Miska

    Miska Jedi Youngling star 2

    Registered:
    Apr 18, 2002
    awww! Cute cute cute!! I'm still wondering who Crash should end up with though- something about Shael bothers me...although maybe that's because he reminds me of my old boyfriend! :D Anyway, anxiously awaiting the next post!
     
  5. Healer_Leona

    Healer_Leona Squirrel Wrangler of Fun & Games star 9 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Jul 7, 2000
    I don't mean to say that I'm jealous of my computers and don't want anyone but me to use them ... but I'm jealous of my computers. And I don't want anyone other than me to use them.-- that line still makes me laugh out loud! Awww, I do so like when Crash and Shael are getting along. They're such a cute couple.
     
  6. Jedi_Nifet

    Jedi_Nifet Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 8, 2002
    I don't mean to say that I'm jealous of my computers and don't want anyone but me to use them ... but I'm jealous of my computers. And I don't want anyone other than me to use them

    Sounds so much like me! :D
     
  7. Lilith Demodae

    Lilith Demodae Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 1, 1999
    Crash and I have the same views about other people using our computers. They can look over my shoulder all they want, but they'd better not sit in my chair and touch my keyboard. Maybe it's because -all- my writing is on here....


    ____________________________________



    Our picnic was pleasant and lazy. We lay on a small blanket and fed each other finger foods and tried to ignore the sounds of traffic over our heads. The ambient light of the city, from apartments, offices, navigation beacons and the rest, produced a pervasive glowing haze across the sky that hid any hint of the stars, but we didn't mind. Running lights from passing vehicles worked just fine for us.

    Shael lay on his back, fingers laced behind his head, and I was cuddled up by his side, my head pillowed on his shoulder. The night was clear and cool, but not cold enough to be uncomfortable. Everything was perfect.

    Unfortunately, now that we were laying quietly, just enjoying each other's company, my thoughts kept turning back to Mason and those blue dots. What did they mean? Now I know he wasn't obligated to tell me everything, he was supposed to be undercover after all, but still ... how could I be reasonably expected to help him figure all this out if he didn't keep me clued in?

    //At least with Shael things are back to normal.// I had only barely completed the thought and was about to sigh in contentment when my tall, handsome, insecure man shifted and spoke.

    "So, how's Cade doing?"

    On the surface the question was totally innocent. His voice was casual, but something in his tone and the very question itself set off all my jealousy alarms. Shael was Roble's first lieutenant and the jealous type to boot, but he should have known exactly how Mason was doing. The Jedi didn't ask awkward questions like the cops did, he didn't try and worm his way into high level meetings, he was unobtrusive and everyone liked him. In short, he was perfect.

    Shael jolly well knew all that and was still asking me. The reasons for asking me, and at a time like this, was a very short list. It meant that he wanted to know how I felt about Mason as a person. He wanted to know why Mason was spending so much time with me, more than usual for the sponsor of a very successful new member to spend. And I couldn't tell him why. It added up to frustration and anger. Not the best of emotional mixes for me.

    "Not bad," I answered in as bored a tone as I could manage. My temper was starting a slow boil. //I thought we already took care of this!// "Bulldog and Trapper keep him out of trouble." I forced a chuckle I didn't feel. "They're almost being better sponsors than I am."

    There was no immediate response and I began to relax again. It could have been a perfectly honest, innocent question, something to spark conversation. Maybe I was making a battle cruiser out of a skyhopper.

    That brief, happy thought was shot to flaming wreckage.

    "Chenowyth, if you're trying to let me down easy, don't. Just tell me and get it over with. Ripping my heart out slowly doesn't make it hurt any less."

    Whatever I had been expecting, that wasn't it. Rising to my knees and sitting back on my heels, I looked down at him, my expression puzzled. "What the kriff are you talking about?" I demanded.

    Shael pushed himself up on his elbows, his dark eyes glittering in the city's glow. "Everyone raves about Cade. They talk like he's the Force's gift to swoop gangs. He's got a decent ride, knows what he's talking about when anyone asks him anything. He hides it nearly as well as you do, but it's obvious he's had a better than average education, and he doesn't flaunt it. Everyone loves him."

    Those haunted eyes met mine, a burning certainty shining out from them. "Do you?"

    My mouth dropped open in surprise. Shael wasn't usually this direct about anything but riding. In a ruthless, lightning fast self-evaluation, I examined my feelings for Mason Cade. No, easy as it would
     
  8. Shaindl

    Shaindl Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 18, 2002
    I love Nash! She's quickly becoming one of my favourite OCs on the boards. I hope we see more of her as the story goes on.

    As for Shael, isn't it just like a man to see trouble where there is none? What a doofus. :p

    Great post, Lilith! Can't wait for more!

    Shaindl
     
  9. PadawanKitara

    PadawanKitara Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Dec 31, 2001
    Nash is great!
     
  10. Healer_Leona

    Healer_Leona Squirrel Wrangler of Fun & Games star 9 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Jul 7, 2000
    Awww, just the way Shael tells Crash not to try and let him down easy melts my heart for him Can't help but love Nash's no nonsense approach to men. LOL!!
     
  11. Lilith Demodae

    Lilith Demodae Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 1, 1999
    Sorry guys, RL bit down hard this week. But here's the next bit for you.


    _____________________________



    The lockdown was indeed lifted, but Roble and his merry men kept me too busy to enjoy it for the first couple of days. When I wasn't making more illegal forays into other people's computer systems, I was writing reports and helping my machines project route suggestions, escort strengths, necessary weapons minimums and other things that I didn't understand nearly so well, but that Roble insisted he needed to have. I shrugged and typed in commands. My computers shrugged and did what I told them. Roble told me what to do and went away happy at the end of the day, having all the graphs, charts, maps, and recommendations my babies could spew forth.

    In the brief moments of spare time I had, I opened up my key stroke file and recreated the map and the little blue dots, though I used green instead. Not the most clever deception I've ever come up with, but it served my purpose. When Death walked away for the day, muttering to himself about what he saw on the hard copies he was carrying, I brought the map back up and began to study it. I wasn't worried about Mason seeing it since he was out on patrol with a group of others.

    The dots didn't seem to make a lot of sense. They were grouped along territory borders, but other than that, there was nothing about them that jumped out at me as a possible connection.

    "You've got a good memory for the skirmishes, Crash."

    I jolted slightly at Trapper's voice behind me. He was leaning over my shoulder slightly, his finger tracing a few of the dots. "Skirmishes?"

    "I'm very impressed. You've even got the two that happened just after lockdown was called," he continued.

    Going into overdrive, my mind spun with the implications. These dots were the locations of the various skirmishes? That made a whole lot more sense than any theories I'd come up with over the last day and a half.

    "Yeah, but I'm having trouble remembering when they happened," I lied through my teeth to him. "Do you remember enough of them to at least give me a good start?"

    He shrugged nonchalantly and dropped into a chair as if he had suddenly been de-boned. "Sure."

    I pulled up the locations and he either told me when they happened or told me that he didn't know. As soon as I had gone through the whole list, Trapper rose and slouched away to find something a little more interesting to do and I hunched forward to give the computers a few last commands. I erased all the previous dots and told my babies to put them all back up again, but color coded for when they happened, moving slowly through the rainbow of colors over the last few months that the gang hostilities had been escalating.

    The picture showed me something I had halfway expected. There was really no pattern to it. First here, then there, with no rhyme or reason. Then I looked closer. A few of them I could see where one skirmish had happened, then several had been retaliations back and forth for the original fight. But there were others that made no sense, even the one that had wounded Shael. They looked random. Then I looked again. Mason had to have been looking for something among all this, I needed to look too.

    It made perfect sense that the only territory border relatively free of dots was our own. After all, when the skirmish went down Roble declared a lockdown. We weren't out there to be fighting with, so of course we hadn't had any others. As I recalled, we still hadn't decided which of the other gangs had hit us that time, either. It had sure made us mad though. //If Death weren't so worried about keeping every member of this strange family alive and kicking we'd have gone out and bloodied the nose of whoever did that.//

    I sat up straighter suddenly. Maybe that was it? I looked again. Sure enough, whenever the fighting in an area would die down a bit another first strike would show up and start things off again. Someone was prodding at us all, trying to k
     
  12. HaiGan

    HaiGan Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 7, 2000
    I enjoyed this the first time around, and I'm enjoying it this time too.
     
  13. Jemmiah

    Jemmiah Jedi Master star 5

    Registered:
    Mar 5, 2000
    Yup! Me too! :) :) :)
     
  14. Healer_Leona

    Healer_Leona Squirrel Wrangler of Fun & Games star 9 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Jul 7, 2000
    Ahh, see. You never know when the Force will lend a hand. Crash opens Mason's file and just who should happen by but perhaps the one person who knows what all the little dots imply.

    Wonderful writing Lilith! I hope RL lets up on you soon.
     
  15. Shaindl

    Shaindl Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 18, 2002
    Ooh, now what do they do with the new information? Great job, Lilith!

    Shaindl
     
  16. Lilith Demodae

    Lilith Demodae Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 1, 1999
    My dad has gone on a cruise around the caribbean with my mom, [heavy sarcasm]poor man[/hs], so I'm subbing for him at work, since I haven't got anything better to do. Anyway, I'm going to bed and getting up much earlier than I'm used to and staying pretty dang busy. As long as I remember to post when I get home we'll be okay.
     
  17. Ty-gon Jinn

    Ty-gon Jinn Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 12, 2000
    Okay, you know what? You need a guy for a reader.

    Once I got past rolling my eyes at all the girls swooning over Qui-gon, I looked over the story again. ;) Nice job, Lilith. I like Crash's perspective... most first-person fics here on the board are not that well-written; not so here. Very nice job, Lilith.
     
  18. Shaindl

    Shaindl Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 18, 2002
    Please, Ty. We girls had to deal with guys ogling Padme's "insta-croptop" at the end of AOTC. :p

    'Course, I guess you guys won't have much to look at in Ep.III since she's going to be preggers. So you had to get it all in AOTC. :D

    Shaindl
     
  19. Ty-gon Jinn

    Ty-gon Jinn Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 12, 2000
    Ah, I just enjoy remembering the little conversation I had with Dad watching AOTC in the theater. The "insta-croptop" had just appeared, and Dad leaned over to me... "She's too old for you." I raised an eyebrow at him, and he said "and too young for me." ;) Forget the fact that she's a few years older than I am; within a week of seeing AOTC, my dad was exactly twice Natalie Portman's age.
     
  20. Healer_Leona

    Healer_Leona Squirrel Wrangler of Fun & Games star 9 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Jul 7, 2000
    Hey Ty-gon... I suggest you don't read replies to future posts... we ooglers will be getting even worse. [face_devil] But please stay to enjoy the story, it's really great.
     
  21. Ty-gon Jinn

    Ty-gon Jinn Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 12, 2000
    Now, is it just me, or did the Triplets remind anyboady else of Muppets?

    Now I just have to figure out WHY they would...
     
  22. PadawanKitara

    PadawanKitara Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Dec 31, 2001
    Muppets? No,more like the twins in Gone with the Wind
     
  23. Lilith Demodae

    Lilith Demodae Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 1, 1999
    Muppets? Really? How strange....


    ___________________________________


    "That's what I thought," I confirmed. "Whenever things quiet down too much there's another fight in disputed territory."

    "Could one of the other gangs be behind all this?"

    I beamed with pride at him. Right off the bat he assumed, or maybe he knew, that the Horsemen weren't behind it. He was becoming quite the loyal member.

    "Could be, but I really don't see what they could hope to gain from it. No one gang could run the whole sector. And the competition keeps the cops busy. If they only had one gang to focus on it'd be like a swoop trying to take on an armed shuttle. Sure the swoop has more places to hide, but the shuttle's got sensors and weapons and shields. No contest."

    Mason kept me busy the rest of the night. Since he knew about the skirmishes that had happened while we were in lockdown, I assumed he had some means of communication with his superiors that I didn't know about and that no one else had caught him at. But they didn't seem to be able to get him the information that I could. He had me create maps of the sector's property values, of crime hot spots, of anything and everything we both could think of, but none of it seemed to mesh up with what we already had.

    Finally he slouched back into his chair, long legs jutting out, fingers laced behind his head, looking every inch the swooprider he was rapidly becoming. "There must be something here that we're missing."

    I sighed in exasperation. My eyes were dry and tired from staring at screens all night. My shoulders and back ached from leaning over my keyboard, and I wanted nothing more than to collapse on my bed and sleep through the entire next day. "Look, this is useless. We're not getting anywhere at all. It's like that stupid file you had me pull down, just garbage."

    "What file?" he muttered.

    "That police report file. I glanced through it and it was totally unrelated to anything we're working on here."

    Mason sat up straight and concentrated for a moment as he recalled the instance I was describing. "What was it? Pull it up."

    "It was nothing!" I moaned, but typed in the necessary commands anyway. When it came up Mason leaned in to read it through and I leaned back, trying to ease my shoulders. The only one still up was Nash, who only slept in two or three hour blocks at a time. She was essentially always up. Me, I wanted to sleep before my eyelids dried open.

    "Crash, where is this location mentioned here?" Mason's mellow voice pulled me out of a half doze and I had to blink a minute before I found the line he was pointing to.

    "Oh, uh, that's over in the northern half of the Hounds' territory," I told him blearily. "Forget it, it's nothing but a disturbance report."

    "Yes, but I feel that there's something more here. Can you bring up a street map of the area?"

    "Sure, why not?" The map soon spread in its electronic blandness across my main monitor. I pointed out the building the disturbance had been called in from. "There it is. See? Nothing. It's not even in disputed territory or anywhere near a border. I don't," I stifled a yawn, "see the connection."

    "What's this building here, next to it?"

    I leaned in and glanced at the map. "Uh, CoruCorp's sector office."

    "CoruCorp?"

    "Yeah."

    "Aren't they Teletron's leading competitor for that new comm chip?"

    "So?" My bed was no longer just calling to me, it was flashing neon signs and chanting, "Sleep, sleep, sleep."

    "So it appears that they had a break-in and didn't report it."

    "Mason, I didn't pull down B&Es, just piracy, highjackings and drive-bys. You don't know if there was a report filed or not."

    "No, but you can check."

    "True," I shook my head at him, "but not tonight. I'm tired and if I slice cop central when I can't hardly tell the keys on my board apart, I'm going to get us in deep trouble."

    "Tomorrow then?"

    "Yeah, sure, tomorrow." //Anything if you'll l
     
  24. Miska

    Miska Jedi Youngling star 2

    Registered:
    Apr 18, 2002
    oooh...why do I have a bad feeling about this?

    LOL can't wait for more, as always!
     
  25. Jemmiah

    Jemmiah Jedi Master star 5

    Registered:
    Mar 5, 2000
    Oh, I don't know...a little Qui drooling is a very healthy outlet for all those pent up feelings! :)

    Still loving this, Lilith! :D
     
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