Sith-I-5's RP post rescue, and fic - Lt. Baille Harte (nothing new, just collating material)

Four months later...

And introducing:
Character - Samantha Irisa
Uh, who? - Young woman who has grown up among the few survivors of the Republic-era security agency, SGIS (the Secret Galactic Intelligence Service), with them as her family.
Originally a teenage jedi padawan in the aftermath of Order 66, she eventually had to be abandoned on Pantolomin, where she was adopted by an older SGIS' fugitive, and re-raised as a normal child.
Ship - The Detective Wyms, a Firespray-31 patrol craft
Timeframe - 16BBY -
Source - Galaxy at War III: Schism of the Sith roleplaying game on the RPF.



Samantha Irisa, former padawan, and Mitch's neice

Credits: #1 The Secret Galactic Intelligence Service was created by Dubya_Scott, for his Star Wars...007 Style series of roleplaying games. I played in them, and continued their existence, and the histories of my personnel in subsequent games and fic.

#2 pashatemur, GM of Galaxy at War at the time I joined, and became a Co-GM responsible for Jedi, may have created Irisa as a named or un-named 15-year old padawan npc, and handed it to me to run with. Or she might be my original character, not really sure.

---

Location: Nursery Cabin, Deck Two, the Darth Unlucky cruiser, Wish Manse, Christophis


Baille Harte lay awake on the lower of the two bunks, warm under the covers, hemmed in on both sides by the durasteel safety rail inches from her right shoulder, and the furred blue bulk of her Ortolan plush sandwiched between her left side and the bulkhead.

Young Baille, encouraging herself to climb the stairs, to explain herself.​

Her Dad, as she now freely considered her Twi'lek rescuer, had originally insisted she take it to bed as a comforter, and in the face of her initial resistance to his new policy of infantilism, had presented it as the only alternative to him continuing sitting in her room overnight, ungainly sprawled on the uncomfortable-looking beanbag chair, to monitor her in case she nightmared because of her recent life-changing traumas.
She had accepted it as the lesser of two evils, and as with many things that she had resisted in her first days aboard the Republic cruiser that she now called home, it was just part of the routine.

Just part of her life now.

Like if she was out in the parkland or the forest, or "allowed to play outside" as he termed it, to be back aboard the ship ready for the bath, story, and bedtime Golden Hour.

Having to wear CatchItAlls under her nightdress, so that she had no excuse to be wandering the vessel at night after he had kissed her on the forehead, and snicked the bunk's safety rail into place.
She had aggressively argued wearing them at first, only submitting after Dad had hauled her over his lap, hitched up the back of whatever she was wearing, and swatted into her that the matter was non-negotiable. Now, when she had to be changed, she just lay back, kept her hands out of the way, and thought of Corellia.

"Are you awake?" Asked the young woman in the bunk above, anonymous in the darkness. A single nightlight played colourful cartoon animals across a far wall, but that was it.

Her bunk-mate for the night had landed in her own ship, just that day, settling on the grassland near the Darth Unlucky's nose.

To Baille's practiced eye, the woman should be a little bit older than her own twenty-five standard years. But to see her around the Twi'lek, and how she carried herself, put you in mind of an younger teenager.

Baille had noted with interest that Dad treated the visitor like a junior family member as well, and the woman, who was named Irisa, reciprocated.
It was clear that the two had known each other for many years.

"Yeah." Baille answered simply.

"Is Uncle Mitch your Dad?"

"Yep." She had no hesitation confirming it now. The way she had left him on escaping the Imperial hangar bay, telling him over the comm that he was creepy, and flying off in the other direction, most of her thought he had abandoned her to her fate. She had certainly given him enough reason.

But a small part of her thought that if there was anyone coming to save her again, it would be him, and on her third night dozing in the Manse's captive quarters, after a hard shift of gem mining in sweltering conditions underground, she had decided that if he did come for her, he would have earned the right to be her new parent, if he still wanted to be.

Of course, after his welcoming her into his care with a severe thrashing, she had reneged on that, only to have some of the girls that she had befriended and confided in, who had been slaves there long enough to lose all hope, ignore her sobbing distress to encourage her to give him a chance. That they wished he had come for them. "Yes. He is."

"That's good. That makes us cousins."

"I'm glad." She smiled up at the bottom of Irisa's bunk. After a second's hesitation, something that she had been thinking about all day, pushed itself to the forefront of ther mind. "So how come you are only Dad's neice? Not good enough to be his daughter?"

"You know how friends of parents get presented as aunts and uncles, so the kids feel comfortable around them?"

The former Imperial remembered. "Yeah."

"Well, my Mum was Uncle Mitch's boss before the Empire. He's been there, as long as I can remember; he is one of the grown-ups I have been close to. Has he told you about SGIS?"

Baille nodded. "He said he signed me up as a junior agent, but then I flew away." Her smile faded. "I didn't know if he'd give me another chance, which is part of why I am glad to meet you, and to learn we are cousins now."

"There is a difference between being in the SGIS family, and working for them. They've been my family all my life, growing up, but I literally only had my first assignment a few months ago." Irisa's voice paused, presumably for breath. "So, they'll be your family too."

"I'm glad."

"Why?"

"Because, even though I'm not quite as helpless as he believes I am, I am no good by myself." Baille rolled to press her face against her plush, and began to cry into the soft material.

Nifesta's concerned tones intruded into the room for the first time, relayed by a baby monitor discretely placed into one corner. "Baille, Honey? I will be right down!"

There was the rustle of compressed mattress and thrown blankets from the top bunk, and Irisa's voice shrilled, "It's alright, Uncle Mitch, I've got this." She jumped down softly to the deck.

"You sure?"

"Yeah." Irisa reached a hand through the safety bars to stroke Baille's hair. "Hey, it's alright. No-one thinks you are useless."

"He does. I cannot do anything right."

"He does not think you are useless." Irisa insisted gently. "You just have to show him what you can do."

"But every time I try to show I can do something, I get punished, and told that I am not allowed to do that, or that it is not safe."

"I've known Uncle Mitch a while, and he won't usually spank first, and tell you it was wrong, later." It also wasn't unheard of, she conceded to herself, "But if you did something that you'd been told not to do, then got a hiding for it, frankly you may have been asking for it."

Baille stopped sniffling, and rolled back to face Irisa above through the safety rail. She still sounded downcast as she asked, "Has he ever pulled your underwear down and spanked you?"

Irisa shrugged sheepishly. "Girls will be girls, I guess." She lowered her own voice to a whisper, and push her face closer to the rail. "Honestly, when Mum told me I had to spend a few days with Uncle Mitch, I thought 'Oh sith, she's setting me up'. She'll call ahead and tell him about the space battle."

Baille furrowed her eyebrows at her new cousin. Space battle? Had she heard right?

"Baille, cover your ears." Nifesta's voice snapped.

His new daughter heard Samantha's sharp intake of breath. For her own part, she made no move to do as she was told, and was immediately treated to the Twi'lek's first expletives within her earshot.

The Imperial prison guards had sworn at her all the time, and various people in the Manse used bad language, but she had not noticed that the weeks living with the Twi'lek had been free of all that. She just had not noticed.

"Samantha, when the frak were you in a space battle?!" The relayed voice demanded. "Was Pantolomin attacked? Is your mother alright?"

"Mum's fine!" Irisa turned towards the far corner where the monitor was. As she moved, the nightlight showed that she was in an oversized white t-shirt bearing a stylised brown Wokling in the front. "This wasn't at home, this was Port Haven."

"Port Haven?" The voice paused. "In the Whendyll System? What the frak were you doing there?"

"Uncle Yav was on a mission. Undercover. I was assigned as his liaison."

Baille absorbed this and raised an eyebrow. She had an 'Uncle Yav' as well, did she? That also reminded her that Dad had mentioned another different uncle just before she had told him he was creepy.

"Being a liaison is a long way from participating in a space battle, Young Lady." Mitch reminded. "I've told you a million times not to exaggerate, Samantha. A couple of TIE fighters does not a space battle make."

"No, Uncle Mitch."

Baille regarded Irisa's partially silhouetted form. She doubted the older...girl would confuse the meaning of space battle with a common dogfight. No-one with a half-decent grasp of Basic would.

"Baille, Honey. Are you alright now?"

"Yeah." She called out, then bit her lower lip at the slip. If that was a test to see if I had my ears covered, I screwed that up.

"Do you need changing?"

She felt her face roast in the darkness at the embarrassing enquiry. She didn't think Samantha knew about...that. And she wasn't about to share. Thanks for the reminder.
"I'm fine."

"Are you okay, Irisa? Do you need to go to the fresher?"

"I'm fine, Uncle Mitch."

"Okay, good. Right, its getting late, and its time you girls went to sleep. If I hear anything more than basic goodnights or acknowledgments, I am coming down there and slapping legs. Do I make myself clear?"

Baille called out goodnights to both as the nightlight cast cartoon characters across the nearside outline of her cousin's bare leg as it disappeared up into the top bunk.

---

 

Location: The Darth Unlucky, Republic-class cruiser, Wish Manse, Christophsis.


Irisa had been in the large, well-appointed kitchen for about twenty minutes, before Baille and Mitch turned up.
She wore a thick khaki skirt and black synthleather kneeboots, topped by a lemon-coloured sweater in Gaberwool. It was warm enough aboard the ‘Unlucky, but step outside and there was a biting chill wind, most days, seeing as the cruiser was parked atop an already airborne, floating habitat.

The room was spacious, mostly metal accents. The island, a central rectangular block with a black, faux marble top, faced by four heavily padded metal stools on thick polished columns.

She already had steaming food on her plate, toasted flatcakes liberally bathed in a maroon-coloured syrup.

“Got enough syrup there, Kiddo?” Mitch enquired on entering, coming to stand on at the block, opposite side to the stools. “It’ll go straight to your hips.”

Irisa grinned and raised an eyebrow. “And what do you know about it?”

The taller Twi’lek shook his head. “Absolutely nothing.”

Baille shimmered in a knee-length version of the scarlet sleeveless cheongsam that she had escaped Imperial custody in, the thigh slits not leaving much to imagination as she manoeuvred herself up onto the stool, one removed from Samantha.

“And what do you want for breakfast, Kitten?” Mitch interrogated.

“You should try some of this.” Irisa gestured at her fare with her fork.

Baille eyed the syrupy mess. “I’m not really hungry.” Mitch had never made that stuff for her, and it looked too rich for her tastes anyway.

Nifesta regarded her with a concerned expression, but said nothing.

Mitch checks on his daughter.​

The V-Wing pilot, used to being told that she couldn’t play outside until she ate something, noted his reticence too, and silently added it to the changes that she surmised were because of their guest.

There was several seconds silence, then-

“Baille, Honey; after breakfast, you have an arts and crafts assignment. I want you to make us a swear box. I’m going to have to put in, at least three credits.” He noted Samantha taking an extreme interest in her plate. “And your cousin at least one.”

Irisa fidgeted on her seat. Till she magically aged a millennia, she knew her Uncle would always regard her as one of his kids, and her using bad language around him, usually merited a smacked bottom and stern words. That she had not been invited over his knee at any time that morning, she had put down to him maybe not hearing her over the baby monitor. Now she knew otherwise. “Uh, Uncle Mitch?”

His polarised eye-band, which hid the Force Vampire's deeply disturbing blood-red eyes from the world, looked down at her. “Yes, Sweetheart?”

“Sorry about what I said last night.”

“Now that you know I heard it, eh?” He smiled, crossed his arms within the loose sleeves of his usual tan robes, and rested them on the island top between them. “Not sure whether its better to have you girls co-operate to design a swear box, or competing to build your own.” He released a soft sigh. “I'd have sucked as a nursery school teacher.”

Baille pointed to her cousin. “I won't have time; Samantha was going to show me her ship.”

“She can play outside. She's eating breakfast.”

And there it is. The former Imperial showed him her resigned expression. “Aaannd…if I had some toast and coffeine?”

Nifesta grinned. “Oh, you can play me like a drum, can’t you?”

“Me, play you?”

Mitch narrowed his eyes behind the opaque visor as he regarded his latest adoptee. “If you have some cereal with your toast, proper bowl, mind; then you can see Irisa’s ship.”

As Baille huffed in annoyance, and slid off her stool to collect one of the porcelain bowls, Mitch reflected wistfully that at least he didn’t have to load food onto a fork like he used to do with Fen', make repulsor hums and pretend the utensil was a snowspeeder, with her mouth as a starfighter bay.

He sighed. He missed that.

****

The girls, or at least that was how Baille thought of her and Irisa together, took the turbolift down to the Darth Unlucky’s lowest deck, and stepped down the open ramp onto the pressed grassland of the parland that formed the Wish Manse’ U-shaped roof.

Samantha did not behave the slightest bit like an adult around the Twi'lek, and Baille felt less self-conscious about being considered as a little girl when she had a peer going along with it.

Although she knew there were a lot of people still in the floating habitat, with the repulsorlift platform that operated with the central shaft out of action, and with the vertiginous drop that climbing the latticework risked, no-one was keen to come up, and going near the square chute at the centre of the forest was one of the things that the Twi’lek had stipulated she was not allowed to do.

They walked over to a craft much smaller than the ‘Unlucky. It looked like an elephant’s head, complete with the flappy ears and the trunk, and was various shades of bare metal.

“Remind me again, what is it?” Baille asked.

Samantha smiled proudly, stepping forward to activate the discreet control panel for the exterior hatch at the rear of the craft, under where the horizontal ‘trunk’ met the main body. “Kuat Systems Engineering’ Firespray-31 patrol and attack craft. My home from home.”

“They did good ships.” Baille nodded as she ran a hand over the cool hull plate, stepping carefully on the vessel’s angled skirt in her bare feet.
Mitch had not carried footwear in her size on his ship, her stormtrooper booties had disappeared after her capture, and the Wishmaster had not believed in his slaves having their own shoes, which was just another reason why he would not be missed by his former subjects.
“My V-Wing is KSE.”

“You have a V-Wing? I’d like to see that.”

“Really?” Baille raised an eyebrow at that, then her face dropped. “Oh, but she’s been in a crash. Doesn’t look too clever.”

“Still, a craft that flew in the Clone Wars? How can I pass that up?”

“We’ll have to ask Dad.”

“Why?” Irisa enquired. “It’s your craft.”

“He’ll probably be afraid that I’ll cut myself on a shard of plexiglase or a sharp piece of metal.”

“You can wear gloves.”

“Oh, don’t you start.” Baille looked back and up at a pair of powerful looking energy weapons on either side of the ‘trunk’, facing directly behind the vessel.

Samantha noticed her cousin’s silence and followed her gaze. “Borstel GN-40 twin rotating blaster cannon. Fire linked. Six hundred giga-joules per shot.”

“600 giga-joules, huh?” Baille smiled, her right hand resting on the cool hullplate. “Don’t know what that looks like, but it feels really comforting to say the words.”

Irisa mouth dropped. “That is precisely what I said!” She stepped back and waved to the dark rectangle of the open hatch. “Do you want to come inside?”

“Sure!” Harte jumped lightly off the skirt, onto the grass and stepped round to enter the craft, ducking under the ‘elephant trunk’.

Inside, she was surprised to find herself standing on warm, coarse sand. Her toes curled in to dig into the granules.

“I was trying to recreate my own beach. If you feel heavier, its because I dialled the gravity plates up a little higher.” She followed and pointed to the layer of beach sand coating the floor just inside the hatch. Unusually, there was no airlock. The door led into the ship itself. “I did that to keep the sand adhered in one place.”

Baille held onto the wall to steady herself, adjusting for the heavier feel that she had in that area, and savoured the feeling through her toes. “I hope you’ve got goggles.”

“Nooo.” Samantha drawled, uncertain. “Why?”

“If you lose gravity, you'll have a ship full of sand. You won’t be able to see, will you?” The starfighter ace watched realisation dawn on the other woman’s face. “Didn’t think that through, did you?”

“I really didn’t.”

“I expect we’ve got some in the stores.”

In spite of her dismay, Samantha caught her cousin’s use of ‘we’, and mentally chalked that in the positive column. She was still assessing the new addition to her family.

She walked the few paces to the front of the ship, where two pilot seats in sweat-stained tan fabric, faced a horseshoe control panel littered with controls and lights.
Irisa waited for her visitor to point out that you could not easily see out of the overhead canopy which admitted most of the light. It was like being in a dark cave, only to find where the roof had fallen, and light from above was coming in.

Samantha glanced back at Baille; but the other girl was getting too much of a kick out of the sand.

"You know, if I set up the solar lamps, we can lay on the sand, relax and have a chat. Our morning should be free."

Harte nodded agreement, and hugged herself. “That would be divine!” She caught the other's raised eyebrow. “What?”

Samantha shrugged. "Divine. Not a word I encounter often."

 

Location: The Detective Wyms Firespray-31 patrol craft, Wish Manse parkland, Christophsis


There was hardly any room on the sand inside the craft to lay two bath towels side by side, but with a bit of overlap, the girls managed it, with Baille promptly sitting on hers and trying to stay out of the way while Samantha clambered past and around her, fixing and g-clamping small black solar lamps to the bulkheads on either side of the cramped exit area.

A soft chill breeze came through the hatch, rippling and flapping back clothing and towels, caressing exposed flesh.

"This all seems a bit of a faf," Harte opined from her peach-and-white striped towel, "Why don't you leave them up, permanently."

Irisa did not respond, stepping smartly to the front of the ship, where she pressed several melodic keys on the flight console. "I have activated the close proximity alarm," she announced on returning, "it will alert us if anyone is wandering by. We wouldn't want to be surprised."

"Surprised doing what? We're just sitting on towels."

In answer, Irisa zipped down the back of her khaki straight skirt, dropped it to the deck and stepped out of it, still in her boots, directly onto her towel. Kneeling, she pulled her jumper over her head, leaving her in a white t-shirt and dark panties. The cap-sleeved t-shirt, bore the name of the Pasarena hotel resort in blue aurabesh script. She folded skirt and jumper neatly, placing them at the head of her towel.
"I know, I'm paler than stormtrooper armour."

"Ain't nobody paler than that." The pilot pointedly made no move to follow suit.

"Well, I am. Oh, you'll need to take that off too," Irisa added as she unzipped her boots, nodding to Baille's cheongsam.

"I don't think so." Baille looked down at her ensemble. "Why?"

"Necessity. We'll need to shield our eyes when I turn the lamps on, and we have already established that I have no goggles."

"Fold it and put it over my face, you mean?"

"Exactly."

Harte sighed. "Laying here, half naked with you, wasn't exactly on my bucket list."

Boots collapsing under their own weight at the side, Irisa stretched out, put her skirt over her own face, and activated the solar lamps on low intensity. The warmth from the lenses was noticeable, but pleasant.

"Drat." Baille squinted against the glares as she unzipped her outfit from the throat diagonally over her right boob, down to her armpit on that side; manouevred herself into a kneeling position where she could pull her dress over her head, and reversed back into a sitting one. She flattened herself, and dropped the bundle of shimmersilk over her face. Initially as stiff as a board, her hands blindly trying in vain to shield bits of her, it took her some moments longer to relax under the warm lights, than her silent companion. She was especially horrified by her fingertips sliding across the triangular mound of waterproof padding over her groin area, that she had forgotten she had been wearing.

Samantha did not say anything, or laugh, and eventually Baille realised that she probably couldn't see it because of the glare.
Later that morning, there was some muffled exchange of personal information, with Irisa learning that Baille had clawed her way to the position of Flight Lieutenant in the Imperial Navy, and was from Corellia; while Baille discovered that Samantha waited tables at the Pasarena, and was a Pantolomin girl.

They mumbled "Snap" when sharing lifetime ambitions; they both wanted to be starfighter pilots.

They remained on their towels till commed to come in for lunch.

---

After Lunch...


...the two girls sat at the island in the kitchen, while the Twi'lek had departed to another part of the ship after putting their plates to soak.

Irisa twisted the stool she sat on back and forth under her, while next to her, Baille crossed her arms, a thoughtful and defiant look on her face.
"Okay, regardless of what he thinks of us, we are grown women." Harte opined, "Shouldn't be that hard to make a collection box."

Samantha smiled. "Good to see you showing a bit more confidence."

"Yeah...well. I can only say that when he's not in earshot, and as far as I'm aware, there are no baby monitors in here."

"So, how are we going to make a collection box? Classic design is to make it out of wood, and sawing or chiselling a slot in the top for the money."

"Yeah, I did woodwork at school too." Harte grimaced. "If there are hand or power tools on the ship, he hasn't shown me where they are. I have a feeling he wouldn't want me touching them without supervision, despite me tinkering with my V-Wing all the time when I was with the Empire. I'm no stranger to tools. I'm also no stranger to his slipper, and I can well imagine him reaching for it if I started using tools without permission."

"Well, don't get yourself all worked up about it; we don't even know if there are any tools on board."

Baille peered sideways at her new cousin, "Why wouldn't there be? This is an operational starship." She suddenly smiled, lifted her right hand and snapped her fingers.

"What have you thought off?"

"I should have my tools aboard my V-Wing. As long as the birdmen, or Mitch, haven't removed them."

Samantha slid sideways off her stool and paused to pull her skirt down. "Let's go then! Vehicle bay for your snub fighter, right?"

"Right." Slower than Irisa, Baille pressed her hands down on the island's top surface to help negotiate her way off her stool, cautiously stretching the toes of one bare foot down to the deck, then standing for a pause after her second foot joined it. She smoothed down the wrinkles and folds in the scarlet silk hugging her bodice and hips, then set out after Samantha, catching up with her at turbolift.

* * * *

Once inside the descending lift, Baille grinned at her companion. “You are leading me into bad habits, you know that don’t you?”

Samantha leaned her left shoulder against the white metal wall. “You have the perfect excuse. Far as Uncle Mitch is concerned, you are my little cousin. He cannot really argue if you tell him you were following my direction.”

The V-Wing pilot wanted to acknowledge aloud that that was a hell of a risk that the girl was taking, but did not dare say the h-word. Mitch had an almost ISB-level ability to hear anything that he regarded as a naughty word passing her lips.

The lift clunked to a halt, and the doors slid aside, showing the low-ceilinged Vehicle Bay which ran the length of the Darth Unlucky’s lowest deck.

This was the only route that she knew off to get into the area, Baille reflected. There was no way in from the boarding ramp, and there must be a way to load and offload the vehicles from somewhere in the lower hull, but she had never been under the 115 metre-long spacecraft.

She paused in the doorway, looking askance as she wondered about that. For the life of her, she could not remember a spoken or intimated rule from the Twi’lek, putting the area under the ship out of bounds for her, which meant that was probably the only occurrence that she could recall of not doing something specifically to avoid getting into trouble.

Irisa had stepped down onto the scarred white decking, and moving towards the rear of the parked V-Wing starfighter.
It and a ground-effect landspeeder of some variety were the only complete items in the bay. Other than them, lots of bits and pieces were scattered across the floor.

The deck probably magnetised during flight, otherwise she imagined there would be a maelstrom of spare parts down here if the deck lost artificial gravity during flight or battle.

“Come on, slow coach.” Samantha chided from beside the V-Wing, looking back at her.

“Hey, I gotta be careful here. Think of it from Mitch’s point of view. Anything that you would be wary about a small child getting into, he’ll tend to react the same way about me.” Harte’s gaze peered around the place till they alighted on a thick pair of rubberised gloves sitting on a crate. “Ah-ha, I’ll just put those over there on.”

She pulled the gloves on, which covered her forearms halfway to her elbow. The dark red items were streaked with dark grease, so she was careful not to transfer any of that to her dress.
Trotting carefully over to her cousin, she instructed, “Start looking out for equipment that could be useful, or footwear.”

She approached the craft’s right side, opposite to Samantha, and made a beeline for the storage compartment, where she remembered the Twi’lek had stored the medical supplies destined for that blockaded planet, Flitter.
If the boxes were still inside, they could get a quick win here.

Baille was dismayed to see the layer of dust that covered the upper surfaces of her beloved craft, distracting her from her reason for coming round this side. She turned away to gaze slowly around her side of the hangar, at the crates, shelves, equipment, looking for a cloth to wipe the black hull down with. Had to be something here.

Eventually she looked back at the craft and edged toward the front and the open cockpit, remembering that when she had changed into the flightsuit during the first rescue, she had had to put that red dress under the seat.

Her Wishmanse captors did not seem to care about the clothes of their prisoners, so unless Mitch had looked inside and retrieved it, it should still be there.

Ah-ha! A smile creased the young pilot's face as she spotted the edge of the shiny red bundle poking out from under the seat's far side.

She used her left hand on the cockpit rim to support her as she leaned in to retrieve the item, then paused before the front of her dress actually touched the accumulated filth of the hull, running a risk/reward analysis.

She had ironed out a lot of what could set the Twi'lek off, but there was still scope. Would she get into trouble for getting the front of her frock messy? He never really complained if she came back from the forest in a less than pristine state, but when she had let the 'rescue dress' fall onto the floor whilst hurriedly getting into the vacsuit that he'd brought along, she'd been interrupted by a single harsh smack across her bare bottom and a glared, verbal warning to look after her clothes.

Mixed messages. She mused silently, besides, this had taken place whilst they were under fire from Imperial stormtroopers, protected only by the starfighter's rear shields. Frankly, the Twi'lek should have had other things on his mind: Ah, brik it. I'll risk it.

She leaned down, her auburn tresses falling past her on either side of her face to brush the seat, straining to get her hand past the far edge, waggling fingers to get purchase on the elusive item. She tried her to keep her feet on the deck, her priority shifting from not wanting to get dirty, to not wanting to topple into the fighter in front of Samantha.

Though the visitor provided no actual peer pressure as such, there had been no-one around for a long time, apart from her self-proposed guardian, for her to...keep up appearances around, and measure herself against.

 

Vehicle Bay, the Darth Unlucky

Baille eventually resorted to stepping up with her bare feet over the filthy hull, and stepping onto her seat, then sliding into it, blushing as this made the lower panels ride up past her waist, exposing the slick waterproof layer of her padded white CatchItAlls.

"Already seen them." Samantha reminded.

"Still though."

Baille reached down between her thighs to retrieve the red outfit, then stood in front of her seat to adjust her cheongsam and make herself decent again.

Wadding the scarlet fabric in her hands, she bent over to press it into the sloped bow, pushing at the dirt and grime and smiling with determination where she saw naked metal again.

"Can't help thinking that your priorities have changed." Samantha observed from the side.

"You continue looking for tools; I didn't realise my ship was in such a state."

 

Resident Evil - Saviours​

The I-5 entity takes pity on the bored Ms Harte, and clandestinely arranges for her to join the DANL (Dead Agents, New Lives) operatives on a mission. This is behind her adoptive parent's back. Mitch Nifesta thinks his baby girl is still tucked up in bed, asleep.


OOC: Thanks to the Internet Movies Firearm DataBase (didn't even know there was one) for assistance in identifying Umbrella trooper weapons.
Amazon used to identify outfits and shoes.
Also, my old friend at Google Translate.

Caitlin Todd – female Caucasian agent with shoulder length dark hair. American.
Toshiko Sato – female Anglo-Japanese with black hair. Age 34.
Baille Hart – petite female human, redhead. Age 25 standard years. Corellian.

​

---

Resident Evil - Saviours

The lights within the armoury lit up as soon as it detected movement, bathing the white walls, black weapons racks and the three women in bright illumination, so much that shadows were almost non-existant.

The women shared the black and white theme. Two wore short versions of the traditional LBD – little black dress, with matching black shoes. All were bare armed, but only two were here in bare-legs.

Toshiko Sato, the Anglo-Japanese former Torchwood operative pairing a black bodycon party dress with semi-opaque black tights, and stilleto-heeled t-bar court shoes.

Kate Todd, formerly of NCIS (the Naval Criminal Investigative Service), rocked a black strapless skater dress with heeled black ankle boots.

All wore Vortex Manipulators (VMs), a chunky wrist-device on brown leather straps of masculine-style thickness, that had teleported them in here from wherever they normally resided.

Kate looked around. “A lot of weapons here.”

The youngest of them, all of 25 years, stepped to the nearest rack, and ran fingers over one of the weapons. She put her head back, closed her eyes and sighed with heartfelt-sounding relief. "Ah, I have dreamed of something like this for so long."

“Nice outfit.” Tosh directed this towards her, eyeing the younger woman's Chinese-style abbreviated cheongsam of black silk or satin, with very fine gold dragon detail across her chest. The outfit only went down to a few inches above her knees, so the left and right side slits essentially meant that below her hip level, there was simply a panel at the front and back that would leave little to the imagination.

“Thanks!” Baille Harte smiled.

Kate was looking lower down, where Harte had white ankle socks with frills, and shiny black flat-heeled t-bar shoes, minute ventilation holes in a pattern over the toe and foot area.
“Yep, very cute.” She looked up and asked a question that her old partner agent, Anthony DiNozzo had asked off a probie agent. “Who dressed you?”

Baille frowned down at her ensemble. “I think it looks alright.”

“Get a sidearm and cover the exits.” Tosh ordered,

“On it.” The auburn-haired youngster nodded and paced along the nearest of the aisles, the racks on either side of her filled with vertically placed automatic weapons. Machine guns, sub-machine guns (SMGs), variations on the theme.

Tosh watched her sashay away, then turned back to Kate. The girl looked heavily tanned, but Tosh suspected it was not natural, though she had not seen any tell-tale marks indicating a spray tan.

Kate exchanged a look with her remaining companion. "No Danny and Owen." She noted.

"No." Tosh agreed. She and Todd shared an apparent base on the moon with two other DANL agents, but neither man was here, yet this third woman was, whom neither of them had seen before.
Still, they were all here at the whim of I-5; all would be revealed later. Probably...possibly...well actually, perhaps not at all.

Tosh activated the audio briefing part of her wrist device, their master’s voice, Sith-I-5, coming from the tiny speakers so the three could listen: “Girls,” he called them ‘girls’, “you are in the secret underground headquarters of the Umbrella Corporation under Tokyo. Most of the personnel here are like Star Trek borg; as long as you are wearing black-” Tosh and Kate glanced at each other, ticking mental boxes, “-and not actively trying to kill them, they will ignore you as intruders, and treat you as one of them.”

“Neato.” Baille’s voice floated back to them.

“Just be sure to stay clear of anyone wearing sunglasses, and anyone trying to kill you.”

Kate rolled her eyes. “Thanks, Dad!”

Tosh smirked at the remark.

The briefing continued: “This base is about to fall under imminent attack. Your mission is the preservation of life. There is an executive helipad containing a jet-copter, and a self-destruct device set into the wall of the hangar with the capacity to ruin this base, as well as a significant portion of the city above. Your mission is to make sure that device goes on the chopper. Failure is not an option. Briefing ends. Oh wait.”

Tosh and Kate looked at the raised device in surprise.

“Miss Harte is not fond of being treated like a child, and will need hearing protectors if you can find them. Okay, that's it. Bye!”

The holograph dissipated from sight, and both women exchanged glances, the taller Kate trying to fight off a grin. "Baille, honey?" She called into the Armoury.

"Frag! Not you too!"

Kate put a hand over her mouth for a silent laugh, while Tosh smiled and punched her softly on the arm.

"How does he know?" A young girl's voice enquired from nearby.

Kate and Tosh spun round, and stared down at a serene-faced little girl of about eight years old, blonde hair cascading over the shoulders of her light blue full length nightdress.

Both stared wide-eyed at the child, temporarily mute.

The girl raised a loose-sleeved arm, to almost touch Tosh's VM. "The voice that spoke; how does he know there will be an attack."

"Who are you?" Kate asked.

"The Blue Queen-"

"Oh right," Tosh interrupted, disinterested now. She stepped to a rack and unlatched a P-90 recoilless rifle and placed the black strap over her neck, talking about the child without looking at her. "She's a holographic representation of the artificial intelligence running the base. Design usually based on the daughter of a chief scientist. The Umbrella base under Raccoon City, for instance, had a Red Queen."

"She's not real?" Kate queried.

"Nope." Tosh stalked away, turning sideways to shoulder her way inbetween Kate and the stacks, her gaze roving over the stacked weapons looking for a handgun and some ammo clips. "Baille, arm up. And look around for headphones to protect your ears."

"Alright!"

Todd was left with the creepy-looking child. "Uh, we don't know how he knows there will be an attack, and we don't know when it will be, since he did not say. You got any hearing protectors round here?"

"Not in the Armoury. There will be some in the shooting range. Right next door. Loss of life, detected."

The last announcement was made with no change in tone or inflection and it was a moment before Kate absorbed what the Blue Queen had said. "Loss of life? Who and where?"

"Akira Ueno. A sentry outside. Cause of death unknown. Elevator Two is descending from the surface."

Kate looked scandalised and started arming up herself. She looked over to the child. "It's starting. You have hostile intruders. Sound an alarm or something!"

In the distance, a faint two-tone klaxon started moo-whooing.

"I better go." The hologram disappeared.

"Hey, wait!"

The child reappeared in the same spot. "Yes?"

"There is an executive hangar-"

"Oh yes, from your briefing."

A loud male voice echoed from an unseen public address system: Security Platoon Four. Prepare to intercept Lift Eighty-Two at the Garage Level. It then repeated it in gutteral-sounding Japanese. Sekyuriti shōtaitsu. Garējireberu de rifuto 82-ko o bōju suru tame no junbi.

"Five floors up. North East Wing." The Blue Queen's face managed an expression of reluctance. "I should really go."

"Okay, thanks for your help." Kate ran her fingers lightly over the handles of the shelved handguns as she walked their aisle, eventually spying a Sig-Sauer P226R that was near to, if not the same as she would have used as an NCIS - Naval Criminal Investigative Service - agent.

She located a black velcro holster that she could strap round her left thigh, and proceeded to do just that, putting a mag clip into her chosen pistol and placing it in the holster.

At the doorway, Toshiko found that Baille had armed herself with just a pistol in a thigh holster, as well as a couple of spare clips.
"That's all you are taking with you?"

Baille glanced from the doorway. "I'm really more of a fighter pilot than an agent, and the only firearms we had were a holdout blaster in our flightsuit. In case we had to ditch."

Toshiko was surprised by this revelation. "Sounds exciting. Why did you stop being a pilot?"

"My squadron were betrayed and ambushed by the people we thought were our colleagues and friends. I got away, but many of my team didn't."

"It happens."

The door slid open with a snap, and a Japanese soldier type in black fatigues bearing the red-and-blue Umbrella logo, stepped through and stopped dead, upon spotting them.

"Kon'nichiwa. (Hello.)" He frowned down at them. Several of his colleague started to appear in the corridor behind him. "Anata no on'nanoko wa koko de nani o de yatte imasu ka? (What are you girls doing in there?)"

Baille had no clue what the man said, and just stared up at him, her mouth open. "Uhhhh."

Toshiko stepped into the breach. "Do you speak English?" She retorted, brusquely.

"Of course!" He looked and sounded affronted at the query.

"We are here to hand the weapons out. What do you need?"

He pointed to a rack of rifles to Tosh's left. She looked in the indicated direction. "The M4A1 carbines, please."

Tosh smacked Baille lightly on the arm, rousing her. "C'mon, give me a hand."

To be continued...

 

Umbrella Facility - Tokyo


Toshiko made a silent count as she handed the carbines across to the Umbrella troopers, and noted a healthy supply of them wanting arms when she hit the twenties.

“Right, we need to go. You guys can take over.” Hand-signalling to Harte, she squeezed between the troops to reach the corridor, checking over her shoulder to ensure Baille was following.

In the clear, the Anglo-Japanese woman moved down the corridor to a quieter spot, and raised her wrist so she could speak into her VM. “Kate. Tosh. We saw you leave.”

“I’m on the Garage Level.” Tosh frowned in concern; she could hear machine gun fire in the background. “Up here to get some intel on the threat. You two going for the hangar?”

Baille arrived next to her and crossed her arms as she regarded her.

“Yeah. Had enough of handing guns out.”

“The little computer girl said it’s in the North Wing, five levels above us.”

Tosh’s eyes flicked to Baille as she mouthed, What little computer girl? at her.

“Copy that. Did she say where the shooting range was?”

“Right next door to the armoury.” Kate’s voice advised. “The intruders seem to be a pair of women in black full-body stockings. Armed with swords and shiruken. Throwing stars. The Umbrella guards cannot seem to land a hit on them.”

“Thanks, Kate.”

Baille uncrossed her arms and wandered down the corridor, away from the troops lining up to enter the armoury, their black fatigues contrasting with the sterile white corridors as much as the girls had.

She checked the walls and doors, then her gaze alighted on a rectangular strip of glass from waist-height to over head height, stretch a hundred metres along the left wall, following it’s left curve.

Through the transparency, she could see several side-by-side alcoves, with ear-protectors on a hook, a clutch for a handgun, and several metres down-range, some paper or cardboard targets, black silhouettes of armed figures, and red and black concentric circles to help the aim.

****
Stairwell

To the youngster’s sulky annoyance, which secretly pleased Toshiko, they were eschewing the lifts.

“But its five floors,” Baille moaned dramatically, sides of her mouth turned down as she comically dragged her feet the few metres from the shiny, new-looking lift doors. She was already wearing her headphones, the black half-spheres connected by a black plastic band over her scalp.
The nifty device would protect her from being deafened by a weapon discharged indoors, while still allowing Sato to chat to her.

“Didn’t you hear those sounds?” Tosh asked, stopping by the door that led to the stairs. “A lot of things being thrown about up there.”

She swung the P90 so that it was suspended out of the way behind her, drew her Sig’ handgun, and used her free hand to pull open the door, which refused to open as quickly as she pulled, as if reluctant to give up access to the stairs.

She poked her gun into the darkness beyond, but like inside the armoury, sensors detected the movement, and flickered on the lights, illuminating stark concrete stairs, some white painted lines to break up the monotony, and each safety railing was a set of diagonal triple metal bar set that went up to the narrow intersection. .

Using her foot to hold the door open, Tosh got a double-handed grip on her weapon, aiming it first, up the stairs, then down.
“I cannot believe this place goes down even further.” She dropped one hand from her gun, and pointed her index finger into the darkness down there. “Keep us covered against anything coming up from below.”

Harte was already custodian of two extra headphones taken from the shooting range, these riding in the bend of her left elbow, though now they slid down her forearm to her wrist as she dropped her hand to her thigh holster and un-velcroed her sidearm.

“I’ve not held a gun in months,” Baille announced, more to herself than to an audience, “My Dad would freak if he could see me now.” That Twi'lek was way too over-protective.
Her right fist aimed her gun over the top railing down into the dark, while her left held onto the railing to help guide and secure her while she stepped backwards up after Tosh, who in turn, reached back from two steps up, and pulled one of the spare headphones off Harte’s wrist, sliding it one-handed over her hair until she could settle both cups in place over her ears.

Toshiko resumed her double-handed grip on her Sig, aimed it up the stairwell, and proceeded up cautiously, one step at a time.

After several steps, she looked back to check the young woman's progress.

"Walk up the steps properly, otherwise you will be here all night."

"How am I supposed to do that, and cover our back at the same time?"

Tosh sighed. "Alright, you take the lead, making sure to stop on the fifth floor up." She paused while Harte stepped up. "I'll take care of the confusing walking and chewing gum at the same time, malarkey. Hold on." Toshiko placed a hand on the other's arm as she drew level. "Any experience clearing stairwells?"

Baille shrugged, looking up the stairs. "Swoop in low enough with a fighter, you can clear a lot of things, rooftops, stairwells, bowels..."

"Thank you for the lovely image. What did you used to fly?"

"Super...Etendardes"

"Really?" Toshiko glanced at the former pilot, surprised. She bad not heard of them since the Falklands Conflict between Britain and Argentina. "Didn't think any of those things were still flying."

Baille had been taught to give that answer if asked what she flew, and to answer in the affirmative if the follow-up question involved the word "French" in it, but this second comment did not, so she remained quiet.

"When flying, you have to continue moving forward, to avoid your engine stalling. You can be threatened from literally any angle, from underneath, behind, ahead, the sides. But here, you can stop. Stand still. And you have to check your angles of threat, so apart from where you are looking now, where can you get shot from? "

She watched her student turn her head up and to the right, and point up to the top of the stairs above and behind them.

"Good girl!" Tosh smiled. "Now rather than going up to the corner and turning to cover that part, you need to do it from here, so each step that you go up, affords you a better angle of view. Okay, take us up to the next level."

To be continued...

 

Executive Hangar – North Wing

Toshiko Sato and Baille Harte had made it up the five stair levels, and following maps on the walls, had worked out that the general installation layout was a main central area spanning dozens of floors, with the girth of a traditional tower block, and eight outlying areas, featuring habitation, entertainment, hydroponics, research, and yes, hangars.

Both women, guns drawn and waved up and down the sterile corridors, reached the short fifty metre ante-hall, for some reason the walls, floor and ceiling, as well as the sealed square doorway, four metres high and wide, that they were walking towards, were in matt black.

Tosh stopped and looked up at the red DO NOT ENTER sign slapped across the door.

“Mm.” She mused, glancing at the subtle lighting near the doorway. She stepped to the wall, and used her fingernails to start prising a panel cover free. “Baille, keep an eye out. I’ll run a bypass.”

“Right.” Harte acknowledged, taking two steps back to the corridor, which provided most of the light they were working with, then, “Oh, is this the little computer girl, Todd mentioned?”

Toshiko glanced over from her work, seeing the blue holographic child back again. “Yes, that’s her. The Blue Queen.”

The girl looked up at Baille. “Hello. Pleased to meet you.” Before the younger agent could respond, the holograph snapped her head round to face Toshiko. “Might I ask what you are doing?”

“Trying to get in here. From our briefing, remember.”

“I told your friend, North-East section. This is the North section. Not the same thing at all. I really would not recommend opening the door.”

Tosh stepped back from the wall, and gave the girl her full attention. “What is so important? Not one of your bio-weapon experiments.”

The child looked serene. “Someone tried to fly out with a drugged Licker, a bunny rabbit that was injected with the T-virus. The beast woke up way too soon, causing the helijet to crash in the hangar. I was able to seal it inside before it could get into the rest of the base.”

Toshiko looked horrified, but recovered quickly, announcing with to much enthusiasm, “SOOO, North East, you say.” She stepped to the wall, and eased the panel cover back into place, making sure it was flush.

Baille, who was still standing beside the Blue Queen, protested, “Hold on, I want to see!”

Tosh walked out past her. “No you don’t.”

“Really, I do.”

“No you don’t.” Toshiko stepped out into the corridor, looked left, then right, then disappeared to the right.

To be continued…

 

Umbrella Facility - Tokyo


Baille Harte dallied too long at the sealed doorway to the North Wing helipad, and retracing her steps back to the stairwell, discovered that she had lost sight of Toshiko.

She trotted down several flights of the claustrophobic concrete stairs, and pushed open a non-descript door to....the outside!

"But that can't be!" The young pilot muttered to herself, a cold breeze batting at the front and back flaps of her dress as she stared up at garish and gaudily-colored illuminated signs on tall, otherwise dark buildings that stretched up in vain to a night sky.

She had been given the impression that the facility was subterranean, meaning that by rights, she should have to go up several levels, to exit the Umbrella facility, instead of going down as she had just done.

The thoroughfare that she stood on, came right up to the foor that she had come through, no apparent sidewalk or pavement for pedestrians, and the main road, which was all she could see at present, was choked with vehicles of unknown description.

Interesting. The speeder manufacturers of this world had fitted the sides and undersides of their ground vehicles with circular buffers, so if the repulsors gave out, they would not scrape and damage their undersides on the ground. Neato idea.

Yellow vehicles, unfamiliarly lettered signs on their roofs, police speeders, multi-passenger hoverbuses, cluttered the highway, but it would be relatively easy to walk down the centre of the road between the parallel lines of vehicles, or, a bit tighter, to hug the sides of the building.

Despite her findings, she chose the latter approach, hoping that if she stayed on the outside wall of the Umbrella building, she would eventually come across the lobby at the front.

Harte started shuffling sideways alongside the dark wall, right hand pinching the lower front of her dress to prevent it snagging on the side or bumpers of the parked vehicles, almost a constant job.

kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

She heard the dragging sound, like something scrapping on ferrocrete, in the distance.

A dozen pencil-thin beams of blue light played over the yellow roof of the taxi cab that she was shuffling past, creating a kneeling image of the little holographic girl she had seen earlier, from lined bare knees under the ruffled hem of her nightdress, up to her blue-blonde tresses and her anguished face.

"Get out, get out, you cannot be in here." The Blue Queen implored the moment her image completed.

"In here?" Baille echoed, looking up at her. "So I'm not outside?"

"This is the testing facility, deep in the lower levels."

She looked away from the holograph as she got distracted again by the kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk scraping sound, which sounded like it was getting closer, "What the hell is that sound?"

"Your presence has triggered activation of the Bio Hazard."

Now the youthful redhead gave the holo her full attention. "Biohazard? Do I need a breath mask?"

"No! You need to run. Try to get to the other end of the chamber. And get out into the open where you can manouevre better!"

Most of the response was lost on Baille, who was thinking about the threat being some sort of biological or chemical agent, but the Blue Queen's assertion that she should be in a position to move around better, struck a chord.

There was clearly a physical threat here.

KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

Whatever it was, was louder now, and that meant it was closer.

Three steps brought the young woman level with the taxi's bonnet, and she pulled herself backwards onto it, lifting her legs up and swinging them round 180 degrees so that she could slide on her bum down to stand on the vehicle's road side, rather than face the wall.

Then she saw it, to her right, several car lengths away, a tall humanoid...or she assumed it was humanoid, dragging a huge, long-handled, frag-off axe behind it.

She froze, her breath stopped in mid-inhalation, for the thing had not yet noticed either her or the glowing hologram.

Baille resisted the urge to call, "Cooiee" though to be fair, it wasn't that much of an urge.

To be continued...

 

Umbrella Facility - Tokyo


KKKKKKKKKKkkkkkkkkk

The sound of that giant axe-cum-meat pulveriser scraping along the roadway diminished as the huge humanoid trudged ponderously up the road, having not detected her standing beside the police car.

The irony was not lost on her. For all her recent efforts to side-step being treated like a kid, the 'Statue" game that she played as a little girl, had probably saved her butt just now.

What in the- She stopped herself in time, less the Thought Police that I-5 had warned her about, were listening in. Even if the disembodied voice was being paranoid, a deal was a deal. She had an emotion to vent, even if it was in the confines of her mind, so she tried again. What in...Umbrella's Name, is that thing?

She smiled at that. She could say it around Dad, and he would have no idea what she was talking about. So even when she was stuck around him - every day basically - she would have something she could feel was her own.

The being was a biped, two arms and two legs, wrapped in chocolate brown coverall, calf boots, and a tall person's weathered leather apron. Most disturbing of all, a cloth sack over its head appeared to have been nail-gunned to its skull.

How it was still alive, let alone able to see, was a complete mystery to her.

She literally had a heart attack when Toshiko's voice burst loudly out of the communicator on her wrist: "Baille? This is Tosh. Where are you?"

Harte's eyes were as wide as they could go, as she scrambled round the back of the police car, squatting down between its rear bumper and the dented chrome front one of the parked vehicle behind it. She brought up her wrist, lifted the palm that she had cupped over the vortex manipulator, and whispered harshly, "Shhhh! Can't talk. No idea where I am, but when I lost you, and went back down the stairs, I went through a door, and I seem to be outside at night. Roads, buildings, abandoned vehicles." She was amazed that she had managed to impart all that detail. She had only meant to shush the caller.

"Uh, I think you are in a test facility."

Baille brushed some hair that was drooping onto the device, back over her right ear, and stared at it's simple layout. "A test facility?" She echoed. "What the frag could they be testing? Staff's night vision?"

The girl realised that she had not heard the axe scrape for a while, and while she could no longer had line of sight on its owner, she instinctively felt that it would be a good idea to-

CRRROOOOOSSSSHHHHH!!!!

Glase and shrapnel rained down over her head and shoulders as the deadly crescent blade scythed over her head, having emerged catastrophically from the back of the patrol car's cab, and chunked into the windscreen of the car to her right.

She shot out of her space horizontally, landing on hands and knees in the middle of the road, letting momentum take her across as her attacker tried to free his axe from the crumpled metal and glase holding onto it!

The pilot veered hard left at the last moment before she attempted to jump through the vehicles on the other side of the road, recognising that that would slow her down!

"I gotta go! It's seen me!" She screamed, hoping that that was loud enough to be heard by the vortex manipulator's voice pickup, even though she was too busy sprinting up the middle of the nocturnal street to bring it up to her mouth.

She took the chance of taking a quick look over her shoulder.

The thing was coming, and goodness, it had such long strides.

She turned back, and kept going, putting on an extra burst of speed, glad that she had been outfitted in such flat footwear. She'd have twisted an ankle and skidded headfirst into a parked speeder if she had been wearing those heeled boots that Kate had on.

A wide crossroads looked up ahead of her, an 'X' of black-and-white stripes bridging the space between the four pavements.

Baille Harte veered another left, and risked a glance back to the Axeman, just in time to spot a glint of multi-coloured lights hitting the airborne weapon spinning towards her at head height. Pure reaction, she ducked beneath it, the action unbalancing her forward progress as her world, at that point, basically the two-lane blacktop, her knees and shoes, and the lower flanks of what vehicles appeared momentarily in her peripheral vision, faded to white.

She ducked headlong into something, the impact sprawling her onto her back, the surface burning her bottom through the back of her dress, but she did not stop, did not pause, rolling to her side and pushing one-handed against the bunk-bed to get herself upright-

She did a double-take, noting the blue quilts of her bunk-bed, and that she was back in the starship cabin that served as her bedroom!

Held breath exhaled though her mouth, and she drew in a relieved and ragged breath that hurt her throat to do, and went to her just adopted exclamation: What in Umbrella's name?

"Baille, Honey?" The male voice, too much bass to possibly come from the person that had adopted her, intruded into her sanctum from the discrete baby monitor in the corner. "Have you fallen out of bed again?"

Hearing her Dad's voice panicked her, lest he find her dressed! She was supposed to be in bed, asleep, not gallivanting through alternate realities with Tosh and Kate! And her thoughts were using entirely too many exclamation marks!
Besides, what did he mean, again? She wondered angrily as shaking fingers fought to undo the armpit-to-neckline fastenings on the front of her cheongsam outfit. She had never fallen out of bed. She had to say something, otherwise he would come down to investigate. "N-no, s-something dropped when I crossed the room."

"Really? Did you turn up the gravity in there? That sounded like an asteroid strike."

Harte pulled the silken ebony frock over her head, rolled it into a fat cigar, and frantically stuffed it and her hearing protectors into one of her drawers, under her day clothes, then turned to snatch the knee-length white tee that she had gone to bed in from reached under her pillow, thrusting her head and arms up inside.

"But you're okay though?" The voice continued.

"I-I'm fine, D-dad. No need to come down. I'm climbing back into bed as we speak."

"You sound out of breath, Sweetheart." The disembodied voice observed. "Have you got a boy in there?"

The unexpected interrogative was so out there that she stopped, the t-shirt mostly on, the white cloth contoured against her face as that was as far as she had gotten.
She looked blindly in the direction of the monitor. "Where...where would I find a boy? What sort of question is that?"

"Alright, not my finest hour. It's just that I cannot imagine what you could be doing in bed to make you breathless. Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Dad." Baille prompted, hoping to bring the exchange to an end. She continued changing, getting her head through, and pulling the t-shirt down past her torso and hips.
Her adoptive parent treated her like she was eight; he probably couldn't imagine what she could be doing.

She climbed into the lower bunk, shoes and all, wrapping the quilt over her shoulders. Just in case he was on his way down.

Her head settled into the pillow and she relaxed in the dim light for several minutes, thinking excitedly of the adventure she had had, even if the last part of it had been gut-wrenchingly terrifying.
Reminded of the impossible horror of the Axeman, she turned on her side, and curled up into a protective position, knees together.

"Mm." She murmured softly, not wanting the baby monitor to relay her words up two decks. "Either that's a canoe in my pocket, or I'm still packing heat."

Reluctantly, she pushed the covers aside and sat up, dangling her shod feet down to the carpet. "And I'm still wearing that vortex manipulator." Something, not pain as such, made her touch her right cheek, and she pulled her hand away to see red wetness on the pad of her forefinger. Her gaze fell upon the pillow. "Aaannnddd, I'm covered in glass."

​

Baille Harte sees the Axeman​

 

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New Kids on the Block​

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A Gentlemen's Writing Guild' Amnesia challenge (Nov 2015)​

Potentially starring:
The Individual - amnesiac sentient waking up on an Imperial dropship, wearing their armour;
Aurora Cradmoon - female pilot, Silverra native, and Merc.

---

Sudden intake of breath, and the Individual rocked his head back to look up the low metal ceiling, the rectangular lumi light-panels hurting his eyes.

Bringing his gaze back down, he noted he was surrounded. By Imperial Stormtroopers, black energy weapons cradled at port arms. No-one looked at him, which prompted him to put his hands up to his own face, the gloved fingers sliding down smooth metal.
Crap, I'm one of them.

"SEVEN SECONDS!" Someone shouted.

Till what?

Seven seconds later, he found out, almost driven to his knees by the an unexpected impact from below which seemed to push the floor up at him, while the troops to either side of him, looked down curiously.

Light, not artificial this time, flooded into the compartment with increasing intensity as a horizontal line formed in the wall ahead, partially blocked by the two first two rows of stormtroopers, the line widening downwards towards the floor.

"GO GO GO."

The Individual could only follow the others into the light, the floor falling away into a ramp, and then he was on rough ground, bits of grass jutting in clumps and dozens of his fellows clattered past him, their shoulder armour battering his.

"HEAD FOR THE TREELINE"

He stared round at a side-on view of a winged transport that was had dropped them off, it's front, to his right, sharply tapering down to a sharp nose, while the stern, to his left, was a near vertical bank of thrusters.

Petering out, troops continued to emerge from the dark hatchway, and he stared dumbly as a verdant green energy bolt splashed against the chest of one of them, the man flying back into the dropship like a ragdoll, the other troops stepping round or jumping over their fallen comrade like river water jumping over half-submerged rocks.

Don't just stand there, seek cover! flashed up before his eyes and stayed there, and it was a moment of staring at the aurabesh, before he realised the words had flashed up inside his helmet, behind the polarised lenses.

The ground erupted with explosions not too far from him, shaking the ground underfoot, and showering him with dirt and pebbles that he heard and felt through his helmet.

Beyond the slightly tranlucent wording, the Imperial Dropship Transport rose fast on a cloud of displaced dirt, suddenly intersecting with an energy bolt more powerful than the one that took out his fellow trooper, and exploded, the back blast throwing him onto his back.

His breath sounded harsh inside his helmet, in, out, in, out, till it was all that he could hear.

Your memory has gone, but only temporary, Kitten.

Laying on his back, dis-oriented and confused, his focus was on the words floating before his eyes, while his thoughts ran a mile a minute. Kitten? What am I, a Trianni? I didn't know there were Trianni stormtroopers! And what about the tail?

First up, you are not an Imperial Stormtrooper. I will repeat that for the cheap seats; You. Are. Not. A. Stormtrooper. Now I need you to repeat that ten times.

The Individual's mouth fell open.

Repeat what I have just told you. Aaanytime you like. It's not like we are on the clock here...oh wait, yes we are.

"I-I am n-not a stormtrooper."

This is great, typing crap to cope with any eventuality. Knowing that you will only see this if you fail to repeat the words ten times. I really wish you had asked me for a pony. What little girl doesn't want a pony? I better delete this **** later, cos otherwise you are going to find it all very confusing.

As more words were added, up to four lines were generated before his...her(?) eyes, with the upper lines vanishing as more were created underneath, so that only a maximum of four lines of Aurabesh appeared at any one time, before his/her wide, shocked, eyes.

-ut my girl is smart, there is no way she can't manage to obey simple frakking instructions.

"I-I am not a stormtrooper." He/she muttered, hoping for the words to stop. "I am not a stormtrooper. I am not a stormtrooper. I am not a stormtrooper."

The line was repeated like a mantra, while the world outside the helmet was ignored, and for the moment, the world ignored him too.

"Baille, this is your Dad." A voice full of so much bass that it could not be natural, boomed softly into the helmet. "You are my baby girl, and an SGIS agent. You badgered me to let you volunteer for this undercover assignment. Your memory will gradually return. Your mission is to deliver a replacement data core to the Rebels. But, and I cannot stress this enough, Kitten; you have to be done and back home by seventeen hundred hours."

I'm a girl. That must have been some amnesiac.

"Sweetheart, seriously, I wish you'd have asked me for a pony."

The knowledge that the stormtroopers that had been running past him, were not his friends and colleagues, focussed the mind a bit.

He....okay, then, she, rolled over onto her elbows and knees, because there had been a lot of shooting and shelling earlier, plus the burning hulk of the dropship threw orange and red hazes across the helmet infra-reds.

Baille lifted the helmet off, ignoring the spectrum of smells and stenches that assaulted her nostrils with her first breath as she took in the long red hair draped over the scorched soil under her. "Oh yeah, I'm a girl." Her gaze darted to the upturned helmet. "And now I cannot hear what is going on?" She scooped the thing back onto her head, to find that the voice had gone silent, which was alarming. Had she missed the end of the message?

"Stang. Stang. Stang." She swore aloud, annoyed with herself.

"Okay," the bassy voice was music to her ears, and she quickly choked off her relieved laughter to listen. "-to get the Simply Red dressmakers in town, as quickly and directly as you can. Trust no-one, until you can verify their veracity...oh, right, you've lost your memory; veracity means..."

Baille, as her name was according to the recording in her ear, rolled her eyes. She knew what the word meant, which kind of made sense that her Dad would not know the exact effects of what had been done to her. Trust no-one, he says.

She knelt back and sat on the back of her calves, which her armour, and the undersuit did not allow her to do easily. The morass of verbal flotsam in her ear from Dad included the advice that if she wanted to pause the flow of info, all she had to say was 'stop'. She did so without having to be told twice.

Baille looked about. The action seemed to have drifted away from this spot, now that the dropship was toast, and the stormtroopers had run away.

Muscle memory put her hands in her lap, with one hand feeling heavier than the other, and she looked down to see a grey plasteel case laying on the scrubland beside her, connected to her wrist by metal chainlinks and handcuffs.

Now why in the Original Light did I never spot that before.

It was heavy to lift, but manageable. She felt around the edge with gloved fingers but could find no entry point. Molecular seal. Not for her to open, then.

If she had stolen it from wherever she had come from, she would presumably have had the means to open the case, so by process of elimination, that meant she was a courier, delivering the content somewhere.

She struggled into a standing position, swaying in the unfamiliar pose. Time to get to the dressmakers, which presumably would be in some sort of town. She could not imagine getting much business being located at the side of a highway.

"So where's this town?" She muttered, to be rewarded by an oscillating 3-D holographic arrow in washed-out yellow, a bit above eye level, so it would not interfere with her looking out through the helmet eye lenses.

For now, the floating arrow pointed up and to the right, changing to straight up as she experimentally turned in that direction.

"This way it is, then."

She trotted off towards the treeline, and although still early morning, the light got cut drastically the moment she entered the forest, and she expected that she would have felt a drop in air temperature if she had not been wearing the thermal undersuit.

Despite the holographic arrow on her helmet's heads-up-display (HUD), to tell her which way to go, the sudden loss of light played on her psyche and confidence levels, and she unlatched the strap over the long synthleather holster resting against her left thigh plate, and pulled the E-11 blaster carbine out, transferring the weapon to her unencumbered hand.

Wan sunlight dappled the fallen leaves with angled shafts of light as she proceeded deeper, following the slowly oscillating arrow.

This was definitely some spooky sith.

She spotted stormtroopers ahead of her just once, so pick a direction almost perpendicular to the one the troops ahead were heading, knowing she could rely on the holo-arrow to re-acquire the target.

****
Folic's Town: Population 3008

Operation Follow-the-Arrow, morphed into Operation Nick-A-Speeder as soon as she had exited the trees and found what passed for a highway on this planet.

The arrow inside her helmet had helped her pick which direction to walk in, speed marching along the grass verge, ready to dive into the trees at the first sign of a moving vehicle.

She had found a roadside cafe pockmarked with blaster holes, rotting food still on plates inside, buzzing flies that bumped heads on the dirty, fogged windows fronting the forecourt where she located the Mobquet A-1 Speeder.

Puke yellow, she thought it looked more like a personal submersible than a landspeeder, but the still-working repulsorlift motored her past the city limit sign, and into deserted streets choked with rusting vehicles and overgrown with weeds, and bordered by dark-windowed abandoned-looking buildings perfect for snipers.

Whatever had happened here, had happened years ago.

The agent pulled a lever up to increase the cruising ceiling so she could drive over the parked vehicles, while she kept her eyes peeled for this Simply Red place.

Oh, there! Two hundred metres down the street on the left, she spotted the faded scarlet sign for the place she needed to be, and smiled.

She pushed the vehicle forward, parking it out front, and looked down at the large square pane of ceraglase showing the shop name in an arc, along with decals of a red wide-skirted outfit, and a pair of scissors.
Definitely the place.

The speeder's canopy retreated backwards, and after the trials to find this place, it was a happy woman that unstrapped her restraints, grabbed the helmet, and jumped out to explore the place, quickly finding the front door to the shop distorted. It scraped against the floor as she heaved it open, to find the ceiling bowed and stained dark with long-evaporated water damage, and holed, something heavy having crashed down from the floor above, and through the floor ahead, both views above and below, stygian blackness that did not invite investigation. A mouldy smell permeated.

General debris covered the floor, and to the right of the bottomless pit in the centre, a chest-high counter had a space behind it for the credit till, and slots in the wall containing folded bundles of material.

The agent donned her helmet, both to protect against falling debris, and to trigger the voice playback.

"Reached the dressmakers, have you? Good girl." She smiled at the warmth and sentiment in the voice. "Go behind the counter inside the Simply Red, and the Alliance will somehow detect your presence, send their contact to you, to pick up the data core. Obviously, they will be wary of meeting if you are dressed as a stormtrooper, so a change of clothes will be in the back of your armour. You will have to lose all trace of the stormie gear, apart from this helmet, though keep it out of sight. I would hold onto the footwear though, as I could not fit the shoes in there. Hopefully, with the amnesia, you still remember how to take that stuff off, otherwise we're fragged."

Harte eyed the sagging lip of flooring between the front of the counter, and the rim of the crater, and did not fancy trusting her weight to it. Instead, she stepped up to the bit of it that she could reach, turned her back to it, and tried to haul herself backwards onto it.

Nope, too heavy.

Leaving the helmet and torso protection till last, she started working her gloves off, then released the straps that connected the armour protecting her limbs, tossing everything into the crater, listening to the crash of them bouncing off something hard and metallic.

Hauling herself into a sitting position on the counter went smoother this time, with the sharp edge scraping down the back of her armour, rather than her back, though there was a brief moment when it dug into the space between that and her backside plate.

Sitting on the level surface, she swung her legs over to hang behind it, and lowered herself gingerly to the floor, testing to see if it was firm, and able to support her weight.

It did, and she unlatched the groin plates, arcing it into the crater, pausing in her stripping to rub through the black undersuit at areas of pinched skin.

Both her Dads would have called her a 'brave little soldier' for enduring all that without complaint, she thought with a grin, then started to unlatch her torso plates, removing the helmet in order to get them off, and laid both out on the counter top.

Despite instructions to get rid of the rest of the uniform, she resolved to keep the belt; too valuable to dispose off, she figured.

She accessed the back plate that normally contained a tightly packed Galostar survival tent, instead finding a black cloth square, and lifting out what turned out to be an outfit composed of gauze-like black clingsilk, over a thicker layer of charcoal armourweave.

"What in the Original-" She had spotted something in the depression that the dress had been laying in, and now she stared at the flat, coral-coloured plastic bottle nestled there. "Mitch, I questioned you over the God of Cops thing, and now I have to question your masculinity. No man would think to pack some Rbollean petal oil. No man."

The black undersuit was sloughed off in moments, down to panties and footwear, the deflated mass draped over the plasteel case chained to her wrist.

Pleasantly scented viscous oil poured into hands, rubbed together and caressed down arms and over her chafed...areas, while she moaned softly in a combination of relief and pleasure. "Mitch, you are a beautiful man."

She was probably safe uttering that down here, but she would have to be careful not to say that around him, not if she wanted to be sitting down during the mission debrief .
How he gained new family members aside, the Twi'lek had fairly conventional parent-child values.

Baille bent down to rub oil into her thighs, over the knees, and down her calves, then paused, her eyes alighting upon the pulsing green glow of the transponder beacon under the counter.

She had wondered why her shins were green, but y'know, petal oil.

"Well hello there," she murmured gently, kneading the emollient round into both calves. "how long have you been signalling, eh?"

That wasn't a classic Imperial transponder, which meant the Alliance, or perhaps an unexpected third party was on their way, which meant she had to wrap this up and prepare for their arrival.

And best to assume the thing had been signalling from the moment she had been standing beside it, giving its owners a lead time of about seven standard minutes.
She had no way of telling how far they were coming from, and she didn't want them coming upon her while she was eau naturale.

Baille laid the dress out on the armour, keeping as much of the material away from the filthy counter top as she could, and noted it was a exotic-looking, closed-collar, sleeveless cheongsam, long enough to reach above her knees, high slits on both sides reached up to the apex of where the costume widened to accomodate her hips. Much like the dresses she wore at home, except with transparent panels between neck and bust, and the armourweave ended a few inches short of the clingsilk hem.

"Risqué. And I should probably put it on now."

She hesitated, noting obstacles to the action. Despite standing near starkers in a place that looked like the local avians had had their New Years Party in here, she was reluctant to touch the dress with her hands oiled up. Plus the case chained to her right wrist meant that arm was not going to be able to get into its armhole.

She eyed the sleeve hole. She eyed the case. She eyed her E-11.

Dad hadn't anticipated this, had he?

She probably shouldn't shoot off the chain, but then she also couldn't attend a meet-and-greet naked because the plasteel number stopped her from getting dressed.

What would she say? Risked operation security so she could get the nice dress on?

"Way to go, Baille. Mum's taken you to youngling paddling pools less shallow than that would sound." A thought occurred to her, a distant memory from her school days coming to mind.

She had had only had a peripheral interest in the flimsi fashion catalogues that her friends obsessed over. but she recalled a style with only one shoulder strap, the other arm basically orphaned outside the outfit on its own.

She turned back to where she had laid the black outfit. There were ornate fastenings for an opening that ran from the neckline to just under the right arm hole. Presumably for any fashionistas with necks the width of a Herglichs, she guessed.

She might be able to get the case through that gap, re-secure the fastenings, and while that beautiful dress would be a misshapen monstrousity on her, at least she'd be dressed.

The physical hostage negotiation that her plan entailed went off easier than getting the undersuit off, and within seconds, she was pulling the armourweave down past her hips as far as it would go, tugging to release where it was stuck to her oiled skin, and smoothing the wrinkles over her bust as best as she was able.
The padded material was chilly against her, but she reasoned her body warmth would alleviate that in a few minutes.

She had been through far worst predations at the Naval Academy on Carida.

"Hello?" A voice called up, startling her! She grabbed at the E-11, and peered over the counter at the dark crater.
Something new there, the top three rungs of a ladder.

"Whose there?" She called back, nervously.

"Ummm." The voice sounded hesitant. "That isn't the password."

Oh stang, the password! She stared wide-eyed towards the crater, where the voice' owner had perhaps wisely not yet shown themselves. "Just a minute!" She trilled, grabbing the stormtrooper helmet and dropping it over her head as she squatted out of sight behind the counter, bathed in the steady green light from the transponder. "What's the password?"

"The password exchange is you asking the contact, 'How in Oseon did you break your data core anyway? You drop it while cleaning it?'. The correct response in tone and words is the Rebel sounding world weary and going, 'Oh, that sarcy Twi'lek sent you, didn't he?'"

She took the helmet off and kept it out of sight while she rose up again, her back slamming into the wall behind her at the shock of finding the visitor waiting patiently on the other side of the counter, less than two metres from her!

He was a light-skinned Human, blue-grey long-sleeved shirt of a coarse material, paired with a darker open vest, that looked like it offered minimal flak protection. He wore a backward-sloping black and grey helmet connected to him by chin-strap.

From her angle, she could see smears of dirt where detritus had fallen on it, already.

Spotting that helped to overcome her hesitation. After a moment's stutter, she repeated the password she had just learned, and to her relief, the man responded correctly.

"Lieutenant Arachnid Jons." He introduced with a smile. "Alliance Intelligence."

"Baille Harte. SGIS." She stared up at him. "You don't look like an Arachnid."

"Not enough legs, eh?" He looked over the counter, where the inverted torso armour still lay. "So, where is my package?"

"You mean this?" Harte heaved the case onto the counter, throwing up a small cloud of dust, which Jons stepped back from, then teetered wildly, clearly at the edge of the floor crater!

Harte launched herself across the counter to grab at him, her left fist catching hold of his vest, and bracing herself, she hauled him back upright till he could grasp the dirty shelf himself.

"You okay?" She panted.

"Wow, you saved me."

"No probs." She let go, relaxed and placed the case on the counter to the right of the armour, so that the short length of chain was taut between the handle and her wrist, then took up the E-11, and held the business end of the barrel close to the durasteel links. "Listen, you probably want to look away; fire in the hole."

Jons turned away just as the lime-green plasma bolt punched through the counter, the noise retort loud in the confined space, setting off audible shudders and shakes above them from the upstairs floor.

He stared up worriedly. "This place might be more unstable than it looks, which is going some."

Harte ignored both him and it, one-handedly re-opening the top of her outfit so that she could retrieve the now-released arm, and snake the hand through the arm-hole. The cheongsam had to be lifted above her head enough to show underwear, in order to give herself room to manouevre.

Both hands available for the job, Baille re-sealed the shoulder slit. "Ah, that's better." She looked brightly up at him as she smoothed the material at her waist. "Now, how do I get off this rock?"

"I can get you off." He raised a cheeky eyebrow. "Maybe not the planet."

"Ho-ho. Very funny."

"You'll need to come with me. Your un-official cousin is waiting back at base."

She cocked her head and looked puzzled. "My what now?" New to the SGIS family, she was used to the Twi'lek casually dropping the existence of relatives that she now had, into conversation. She did not dwell on this development.

Jons took possession of the case, lifting it by the handle, and clattered a spare helmet like his own onto the counter. "Your cousin. Aurora Cradmoon. She's standing by with a two-seater Y-Wing to take you back. You ready to go?"

She nodded vigourously. "Yeah, my memories have been returning, and I remember it is imperative that I get back home before five in the afternoon. Just let me grab my belt."

The stormtrooper belt that she had decided to keep got cinched round her waist, along with the E-11 which she hesitated to holster, looking at the weapon in her hands. She placed the stormtrooper helmet on which she had been relying these last few hours onto the floor between her feet, and aimed the blaster into the vulnerable bowl, again warning aloud, "Fire in the hole."

pow

"There! What was that?"

Harte and Jons snapped their gazes to the grimy shop window, and silhouettes moving.

"We've got company. Stang!" The Rebel crossed to the dressmaker's dummy that she had spotted when she had first entered, the thing having the shoulders, torso and hips shape of a female humanoid only, which outfits could be placed on to display their shape.

He knelt at it's base and put one hand carefully up inside it, while she hopped up backwards onto the shelf for a third time, swung her feet round 180 degrees, and landed on his side.
She turned and lowered the torso armour out of sight on the other side, then approached the top of the ladder poking out of the crater.

"We going down this way?" She queried, wary of making a wrong turn. She could see, looking at him now, that his sidearm of choice, nestled into his left-thigh holster, was a SoroSuub SC-4 blaster pistol.

Jons glanced back, his gaze lingering on her exposed legs beneath the mini dress, then returned to his work. "Yeah. Give me a moment, so I can go down and hold the ladder for you."

"I don't like the look of that speeder left floating up there. Could be a booby trap. Call the AT-ST in, and we'll blast it out of the way." A voice continued outside, unmistakably produced by a stormtrooper helmet filter.

"Yes sir!"

Harte was secretly relieved that her abandoned vehicle, which had probably keyed the Imperial patrol to their presence in the first place, was also going to delay them. "Oh, don't worry about holding the ladder."

"No. I insist."

She threw up her hands, "Alright, fine."

"And put that helmet on." Jons slowly withdrew a small blocky package from inside the dummy, about the size of his fist, and moved to balance it carefully on the door handle at the front of the shop, which the Empire's foot soldiers would likely be pushing on, like she had before, to enter.

Doing as she was told, and fastening the chin strap under her jaw, Baille listened for the tell-tale high-pitched whine, and heavy footfalls of an approaching All Terrain Scout Transport.

Arachnid stepped carefully onto the ladder and slid quickly out of sight, then called for her out of the darkness.

She gingerly got onto the upper rungs, grimacing as she had to put her hands onto the utterly filthy floor, and stepped down after him without hesitation, while he admired the view. She stepped sideways from the ladder onto the slightly angled flank of a laundrette machine, one of several piled together down here.

"Alright, where now?" Jons held her hand to help her splash daintily into the black stagnant water pooling down here. "Ugh." She grimaced at the chilled rivulets trickling down her inside calves.

"Follow me."

They jogged to a parked Gian speeder, an open-topped repulsorlift with a heavy blaster cannon mounted on the nose.

"Get in." Arachnid jumped into the driver position, and slapped the plasteel case onto the seat beside him, leaving Harte feeling slightly miffed that she was relegated to the back seat, as she again obeyed.

A loud rumble sounded behind them, followed by noises reminiscent of a protracted landslide.

"Sounds like they brought the whole shop down."

The speeder accelerated into a side tunnel, rectangular lights flashing past above them as the thing sped along for what she guessed was a number of miles.

She found the cool air battering her face to be quite pleasant, and totally got what dogs got out of this when they stuck their heads out of vehicles.

The route angled upwards gradually and she could see ahead that the tunnel ended in a circle of real brightness!

Baille closed her eyes just before they emerged, knowing that she would have to protect them from the sudden glare, and when she opened them again, she found herself staring wide-eyed at a massive construction site surrounded by high walls and a pre-fabricated ceiling.

A long mottled-grey star cruiser with rounded lines and covered with nodes and domes, dominated the place.
It was surrounded by gantries, scaffold, and various ground vehicles, which played bright light beams over it.

"What the sith is that?" She queried, as Jons steered through the hundreds of people going about their business inside.

"Variation on the MC80 star cruiser, built here by the Alliance." Jons revealed, hands turning the steering wheel to take them under the vessel's huge thruster mounts, which were still a good number of metres over her head. "The Empire has discovered our presence, but fortunately our build was complete. Only thing was that we could not lift off, not without a data core."

"Which I brought along."

"Precisely." The speeder left the MC80 behind and proceeded to a flat area populated by a number of starfighters: Y-Wings, X-Wings, Z-95 Headhunters.

The Intelligence officer deftly steered the Gian between craft, and up to the side of a parked Y-Wing, where another woman with dark brown, slightly curly hair around a pale, serious face, leaned against her craft in a grey flightsuit with white harness straps.

"Ms Cradmoon!" Arachnid called pleasantly to her, then turned in his seat to indicate Baille, "I bring your package."

"About time." The woman gave Baille a shy little wave, which the agent reciprocated, standing and climbing out of the speeder.

"Clear Skies, Ladies; I have a data core to install." He steered the Gian away, and sped off back to the hustle and bustle of the construction site.

Baille approached the other young woman, stopping before her and looking her up and down. There was a black patch on the chest of her flightsuit, reading 'Half Moon' in red letters. "Baille Harte. SGIS."

"Aurora Cradmoon. The Mercs." Cradmoon was also appraising her. She pointed up to Baille's forehead. "Look, are you wearing that?"

Baille reached up and encountered the blast helmet that Jons had lent her, "Frag, I should have given this back." She immediately started working on the strap under her chin, bouncing it across the nose of a nearby Z-95, then eyeing the bundle of clothing in the woman's hands.

Taking it, she sighed as she realised it was the youngling-themed flightsuit that Nifesta had given her during her original rescue from the Imperial prison over Christophsis - white one-piece flex-suit patterned with multi-coloured pictures of fruit. Purple ribbed ankle-boots, and a visored helmet.

She was relieved that the Rebel had driven off, and got changed in the space between the starfighter's flank and the domed front of one of the ion engines, hanging her stormtrooper belt on its connecting pylon till she was ready to put it back on again.

Soon, they were both seated in the cockpit with the canopy closing over them, while the craft's pilot communicated with Baille's parent. The ground dropped away as the craft slowly rose into the air. The Y-Wing nosed out of a rectangular aperture in one of the walls, and headed up into a cloudless blue skies.

Baille relaxed back in her seat behind the pilot as the craft accelerated up into the firmament.
When she had been a pilot, she had disliked not being in control of a craft, even shuttles where she was sitting in the passenger compartment, but this, here, she felt relatively relaxed.

I am an SGIS agent. And I have completed my first ever mission.

She now remembered that Mitch loved her, and wanted the best for her, but, due to meeting her on her worst ever week, when almost nothing had gone right for her, he had decided that the best way to keep her safe, was to treat her like a small child, and keep her close.

Her cousin Samantha, Core bless that girl, had convinced the Twi'lek that Baille needed an outlet of some sort, that his brand of care would be counter-productive.

Mitch had sat her down at breakfast, and reluctantly, haltingly, visibly steaming with a quiet anger, acquiesced to let her do some SGIS missions without having him along to look after her, but had applied a raft of caveats:

He had to be the sole arbiter of whether she was available to do take an assignment.

If she was naughty...., well, he really did not have to expand on that one. She had had four months to get used to the term being applied to her, and sitting before him, hoojib quiet, hands nervously clasped in her lap, she knew it meant she would have to tamp down some arguments if she sensed that upsetting him could affect her mission status.

No mission could run overnight, or be too far from the ship that they called home, the Darth Unlucky.

Lastly, and just recalling his phrasing as he ignored her to round on Samantha, growling and gesticulating at the poor woman, made Baille blush so furiously that she was sure that Aurora would feel the back of her neck warming:

"Fine. On mission, she can do whatever she wants, save the galaxy; stand in a battlefield, knee-deep in bodies; go AWOL; blow the mission and defect back to the Empire for all I care; but come the evening, she needs to back onboard the 'Unlucky for seventeen hundred hours, or failing that, eighteen hundred hours. Her bathtime, and her bedtime, are inviolate. She misses her bedtime, no more missions, that's it. No negotiation. One minute past her bedtime, and I'm going in to get her, mission be damned!"

Baille strained against her seat restraints to lean forward. "We are still docking with the Darth Unlucky though, right? I have to be onboard by seventeen hundred."

In front of her, the woman shook her head. "Well, you are not making that. That was ten minutes ago."

Harte sat back into her seat fearfully whimpering as she contemplated the Twi'lek's reaction when she got home late. "I've got a bad feeling about this."

End, initially at 7770 words. I needed to cut down to 5000 for challenge purposes. Challenge version has its own thread; this version has been expanded to fit into this thread.

​

 

Night of, well, a fair bit of consternation​

Fanon Challenge - create a story for Raissa Baiard's fanon species, Hoatzeri; and say something about droids.​

Author: Sith-I-5
Timeframe: Between ROTJ and TFA
Characters: Raissa Accoe (teen Hoatzeri femme), canon, Legends, and OCs.
Genre: Drokk knows. Personal survival?
Summary: Mitch and Baille's emergency response to massacre of Grandmaster Skywalker's jedi students. .


The Darth Unlucky - Christophsis

Many parsecs away, that same Baille Harte was on a swivel-chair at the communication station of an old Consular-class cruiser, putting the swivel action to good use as she stared up at the ceiling, bored out of her mind.
Her stockinged foot got purchase on the metal wall, and pushed her away for another slow rotation, her long red hair swishing as it hung down the back of the chair.

This job was like being the night shift emergency operator at Ice Station Zerek. No-one called in, not even to report getting their tongues stuck to the keylock of their snowspeeder.

It was night aboard the ship too, but this boring shavit was the only way for her to feel vaguely useful aboard the ship and in her life, rather than getting packed off to bed, hours ago.

"Hello?"

Baille heard the voice, but assuming it was a joke, snapped in tired irritation: "Not funny, Dad. Haven't you got anything better to do?"

"Pardon?"

* * * *
Yavin caves

Doom for Worms, as Ben called the sentient avian Hoatzeri, had appreciated the wan illumination that the glowing palm-sized hologram projected, a circle of empty grey squares with three filled ones of fading opaqueness revolving clockwise; but appreciated it a lot more now that the connection had apparently gone through, with the sight of a tiny red-headed human female in a yellow short-sleeved top with a glossy rainbow motif, sitting up straight in her chair and staring back at her in apparent surprise.

"Oh, bork! You're real!" The young woman in the holo sat back and cupped a hand over an ear as if listening for something, then leaned forwards again, looking shocked. "Well, I'm not being told off for swearing. You are real!"

What an odd test. Raissa thought, not knowing what to say. "Is..is that the Secret Galactic Intelligence Service?"

"What? Oh yes!" The holo-femme leaned back, pressing a finger to the colourful logo stretched over her chest. "Rainbow Rescue Rangers, a division of S.G.I.S. Please state the nature of your medical emergency."

Well, that sounded halfway professional. "The Jedi Academy on Yavin Four has been attacked."

"The what on the what-now?"

Raissa repeated the report, and added that she thought the attackers would be coming for her. "We were told to quote a distress code, but my mind has gone blank."

"Don't worry, I wouldn't recognise it anyway. Clearly a Condition Mauve."

"Mauve?" The Hoatzeri recognised the name of the colour but did not get the significance for this exchange.

"According to Dad, it's the universal colour for emergencies."

This was doing a wonderful job of keeping her mind of her own troubles. "What happened to red?"

The human femme leaned forwards enthusiastically, her chest pressing against the visible portion of desktop. "That's what I said! He'd say, that's just Corellians, and whatever you are..., Hoatzeri I guess. To the rest of the universe, red is camp. Oh, all the confusion; all that dancing." She turned away and yelled, "Dad, we have a Condition Mauve at the Jedi Academy on Yavin Four!"

 

...continued


The avian glanced worriedly towards the mouth of the cave in case the raised volume attracted pursuers. The holo and cave walls brightened a few moments later as a new holo appeared to the right of the woman. A close-up of another alien face, one that she recognised as a Twi'lek - humanoid with braintails - looked straight at her.

"Alright, Blue, fill me in. What has happened?"

"One of the students, Ben Solo, attacked me. Then a ship landed and the people inside proceeded to surround the temple. I got away, but they will be coming after me." She ruffled the feathers on the wing unused wing to get some air trapped for warm, and looked with concern at the two. So far, no-one had said they were sending help."

"Where's Master Skywalker?"

"He left on a business trip a few hours ago. Even if he felt something was wrong, he's probably still in hyperspace."

"Inside job, then. They were waiting for him to go."

"I just said it was Ben Solo!" She re-joined in irritation.

"Okay, calm down, Blue; I'm Agent Nifesta, and this is Agent Harte. You have been very brave, and have to hold on a while longer. We are on the way, but it could take us some hours, so we need to arrange immediate assistance for you. Sweetheart? Patch us in to Headquarters."

"Copy that." Yellow t-shirt leaned to her right and hit a few buttons, and almost immediately another holo-grammatic figure joined the first two, brightening the cave even more.

This was another youthful-looking human femme, short black hair in a pixie-style haircut, expressionless face, white short-sleeved top with the tops of four red capital letters across the front, that Doom was willing to bet spelled out the agency initials. "Mitch! Long time no see! And your little girl!"

"I'm not a little, ah whatever, chut-chut. (never mind)."

Raissa's gaze flicked from one to the other. It was like watching a family reunion, rather than dealing with people who had her safety as their first priority. Still, if this Twi'lek was the Force Vampire, she was less fearful about meeting him by the minute.

"Samantha talks about-"

"Not now, Angeo."

You are preaching to the choir. Raissa sighed, exhaling from the nostril holes in her beak.

"Jedi Academy on Yavin got attacked. Blue here is isolated and in danger. Baille, Honey, can you a headstart, in that new starfighter of yours?"

"Uh...uh..." The girl clearly did not get asked that a lot. Her jaw had dropped even further as she tried to use her words.

"I'll take that as a 'yes'. Get going. I will catch up in the 'Unlucky . Lim, she's all yours."

The first two holos dissipated, leaving her with the second woman, who immediately identified herself as a Mission Supervisor Angeo Lim, and followed it with some quite definite instructions regarding Clone Wars-era Vulture Droids, and keeping her comlink safe.

* * * *

Baille Harte in flight​

Darth Unlucky

Baille and Mitch Nifesta saw each other in the corridor of a lower deck as he finished shrugging into his habitual tan robes, and she was pulling her t-shirt dress over her head.

"What are you doing?" Mitch enquired with mock indignation, "That's the uniform for rescue ops."

"Well, I cannot very well fly in it, can I?" She had the bundle in her hands, now only in underwear as she passed the older and broader Twi'lek.

"Of course you can; just don't eject." Mitch joked as he passed her, walking backwards as he continued to instruct his adopted daughter. "Now, when you get there, you are doing aerial surveillance, and only if necessary, air support." He wagged a finger as she regarded him. "Do not land under any circumstance."

The Corellian paused and stared back at him. "Why-ever not?"

"Whatever can take down a trained jedi, even partially trained junior versions; you do not...actually, I'll rephrase that, cos you're up for anything-" He registered her slight smile at the remark. "-I do not want you to meet."

"And what is a jedi anyway?"

Nifesta thumbed his own chest. "Similar powers to your Dad. Now, it is possible that whomever has attacked the Academy, could bring your starfighter down as well. So while I see you straining at the bit to get going, make sure you pack whatever you need to go to ground and evade capture long enough for me to get there. You read me?"

She nodded curtly. "Copy that."

"Okay, good luck. May the Force be with you." They both turned to their assignments, Nifesta calling behind him as he reached the turbolift. "And what are you not allowed to do?"

"Land on Yavin?"

"Good girl."

---

Baille went straight to her room, pulling open drawers and cabinets, throwing items onto her bunk bed that she would have to take with her. Some were survival or mission specific, some were things that she knew Mitch would require her to take along.

Her yellow rainbow dress followed her underwear and socks into the laundry basket, and she frisbee'd a fresh folded set onto the bed next to her vacsuit.

She stepped into the fresher, soaked a flannel with water and liquid soap, hurriedly cleaning herself as she would not have time later in the cockpit.

As a V-Wing pilot for the Empire, she would have grabbed her helmet and run for her ship; but her Dad had specifically told her to make preparations.

She soaped everywhere, including between her toes, rinsed, towelled off hurriedly but thoroughly, then redressed - underwear, her sleek fruit-patterned vacsuit (she had never bothered to ask Dad for a more grown-up style), then pulled the second yellow t-shirt minidress over her head, scraped her sleeved arms through, and tugged it down over the flexsuit's torso and hips.

This was a sop to the Twi'lek, more than what she wanted, but he insisted it was the Rainbow Rescue Rangers' uniform, whilst she suspected it had started life as a large-sized younglings' cutesy nightdress.

Harte sat on the bed to put on thin black anti-bacterial socks, then after checking that the mauve ribbed booties that went with the flex-suit were empty, negotiated her feet into them, standing in them and wiggling her toes inside.

Synchronised movement down near the floor, movement that she had tried to ignore, impinged on her peripheral vision: eight dolls, artificial babies or cubs of various species, and scaled up to her size ratio - so that she, as a grown woman, was not dealing with the size of toy that a real human toddler would, had had their arms raised imploringly to her, tracking her movements, silently urging to be picked up and cuddled.

Her chores, three times a day, were to undress, bathe, and redress them; show them some love, feed them; and for Mitch's unspoken, but obvious to her, entertainment, hold a tea party with them. There were two other dolls, one on a cabinet in the cabin, one elsewhere in the ship.
The nasty little sneaks had basic AIs, she had quickly learned upon their introduction, and their silent communication link with the Twi'lek, had ended her "too-old-to-play-with-them" phase fast, and she fancied that their cherubic little faces had looked satisfied or smug when Mitch turned her in front of them, lifted her skirts out of the way, and slapped her legs.

"Sorry Guys, but something has come up." She stepped to them and reached down among the sea of arms to clasp the chubby plastic forearm of a baby human doll in a frilly white frock, lifting as she straightened and tossing it towards the bed, with the other stuff she was taking along.
Fortunately, the things didn't send alerts for light rough-housing. "Mummy has to go to work."

Stay on their good sides, and interacting with the things could be rewarding, as they were programmed to purr, gurgle and cry in response to their owner's attentions; and Nifesta seemed to enjoy few things more than watching his little girl kneeling down to talk to and play with her dolls.

Baille lifted a flower-patterned cylindrical bag with two fabric handles onto the bed, and threw medical supplies, blaster packs, chewy food bars in, after the Garlostar tent that was already in there. The bag would go under the seat in her starfighter.

She had a shoulder holster for her Model Q2 holdout blaster, and shrugged into that, smoothing her dress as much as she could, then put on her stormtrooper belt, which would have plenty of its own equipment.

All that remained on the bed, were the visored helmet for her suit, and Wanda, the doll named after the holo-starlet, Wanda Starflare, because they both had long blonde hair.

Conscious of the time being wasted, but trying her best to minimise, she snatched up things for Wanda: two changes of clothes, wet wipes, bottle and a hairbrush; stuffing them and her into some sort of pink satchel-like item that had clearly been converted from a macrobinocular case, hefted the bag, grabbed her helmet, and jogged to the turbolift.

* * * *

Vehicle Deck

The turbolift doors opened to allow her into the lowermost deck of the Darth Unlucky, the vehicle bay, where her starfighter and a landspeeder sat, among crates and tools.

Baille was willing to welcome Condition Mauves, as her father must regard the situation at Yavin with such urgency, that she was allowed down here, unsupervised.

The last time she had been down here without Mitch to look after her, had been with her cousin Samantha, and her old starfighter, the V-Wing.

Mitch had replaced it with an older, Republic-era craft, a yellow Eta-2 Actis interceptor, where the s-foils similarly folded up and down to give the ship a profile similar to a TIE Fighter's solar panels. The Eta-2 was a blunter craft that needed a hyperspace ring for FTL (faster than light) travel, so was another downgrade from her hyperspace-capable V-Wing.

Somewhere, there was a bed shop owner, happy with the Twi'lek's bulk purchase: she trotted along the seven mattress laid end to end across the deck, taking her to one of several more placed around the craft to baby-proof it, her boots sinking into the spongy material as she leaned over the polished hull to hit the canopy release, which had it humming open.

She threw the bag and Wanda's satchel inside, then was about to step down onto the actual deck to haul the mattresses several feet clear of her ship, but stopped, wavering at the soft, collapsible edge. The wildly overblown care that Mitch had taken to make sure she did not hurt herself when visiting her craft, meant she wasn't allowed off the mattresses. Some nonsense that she could slip on the deck and hurt herself.

The doll was gurgling happily as she stepped into her craft; Baille pushing the bag under the front of the seat, then moving the satchel aside so that she could sit down. Wanda grabbed at the yellow fabric bridging Baille's lap, as the pilot pulled her restraint webbing over her shoulders, and hit the button to seal the cockpit.

When Nifesta had first bought the dolls for her, he had insisted that she carry one with her at all times, but this was one of the few things that she had managed to negotiate a compromise on.

But he now had a mantra: "Nifesta' girls never travel without their main dolly."

Baille was all for that. After all, she suspected that all ten had locator beacons inside, and had even taken a knife from the kitchen to open the Wanda doll up to investigate. She did not know if Wanda had broadcast a distress alert, or if Mitch had found out another way, but she had only gotten as far as worrying at a membrane with the blade, when she had been discovered, hauled protesting over his knee and slippered hard, accused of breaking her toys!

Nifesta with a slipper was a....a fearsome prospect.

He could certainly reduce her to tears, just smacking her bottom with the palm of his hand, but she was usually still composed enough to be stood in the naughty corner, facing the wall either holding her skirts around her waist to expose her tanned rump, or with her hands on her head.

When he used the slipper, the adjective "always" could be used several times: she always cried and wailed; she always wet herself; she always gave in convincingly enough to appease a telepath; and she was always the closest to being the baby that he insist she be, cooperative to being bottle-fed in his lap, washed down, taped into dry CatchItAlls, and put to bed. Mitch always had to gather her up, reassuring and calming her, cooing and hushing her, massaging her back until she fell asleep in his arms.

To Baille, the Twi'lek with a slipper in hand, was a behaviour modifier without equal. Even if she didn't think she had been naughty, she almost always changed the behaviour that had led to it, as she did not want any of that ever again.
She would never again risk calling him Mitch to his face. She was a good girl and played with her dollies properly and every day, and though she still had her locator beacon suspicions, there was no way that she was opening one of those little drokkers up. They could keep their secrets. Drokk 'em.

The only exception might be, if pushed far enough, she would blurt out that she was a grown woman. But that would be her temper talking, for in too short a time to make the moment worth it, she would be over his knee and sobbing, apologising for telling lies, and promising, again, to be a good little girl for her Daddy.

"Bridge from Kitten." Guess who had chosen that callsign. "I'm in the fighter now."

"Copy that. Lowering away."

A horizontal line of either green or greyish-blue, appeared at the Bay walls around her, widening slowly as the deck separated and lowered to the ground beneath the ship.

She would need to ease her fighter out between the ground and the cruiser's lower hull. A rare trust from the Twi'lek, and partially why she was bending over backwards to accommodate him, such as having Wanda on her lap, tucked under a restraint, pressing lightly against her tummy.

In a few moments, the Christophsis clouds were scudding past her cockpit as she ascended through them, heading into darker skies, and then, space.

Baille felt the free-est she had felt in a long while.

There was a time when she would have run. To the farthest reaches of the universe. But now? She was Mitch Nifesta's little girl. And she had a bath-time to be back for.

* * * *

Christophsis:

This many years after the fall of the Empire, the Christophsis star system was a changed and less threatening place from when Baille had been brought to the Imperial orbital facility there to face trial and execution.

She flew on to the system edge unchallenged, and slid the stubby yellow wings of the interceptor, into the grooves on the inner edge of the hyperspace ring floating in the blackness of extra-planetary space.

A faint blue energy bubble formed around her craft, which she knew would protect it and her from the time dilation effects of supra-luminal travel, which if the field failed, would see her age to an old hag and crumble to dust within the cockkpit before she reached a quarter way to her destination.

One could not become a space pilot while allowing the risk of such an occurence to emotionally affect them, and she was a pilot, even if Mitch usually deemed it too dangerous for her.

The visible stars beyond the system edge lengthened to starlines as she jumped to lightspeed, the ring's nav-systems having worked out where the Yavin star system was, in relation to Christophsis, and plotted a hopefully safe course.

There was a melodic droid whistle from the slowly moving metal and plastic dome to her left, on the other side of the canopy's transparisteel panes, it's green aurabesh lettering flashing into existence across a repeater screen on her dashboard.

The droid was saying that it missed this.

"Yeah, me too." She assured it, though without much conviction.

She had been kept so long outside the cockpit, by her over-protective guardian, that her missing of it had begun to recede, and besides, her rapport borne of long hours flying together, had been with the Imperial astromech in her old ship, the V-Wing that she had been persuaded to abandon on the planet that she was going to now. She hoped that it was still there, and that she would get a chance to visit it.

She had no kinship with this droid to her right, and her Dad had not allowed her to visit the Vehicle Bay enough that they could get used to each other. She didn't even know if this one was an R2 or an R4 unit, which was a damning indictment of the affairs between a pilot and her counterpart.

The Eta-2 Actis interceptor sped on.

Wanda, secured to her tummy, had begun to fidget, and now begun to cry, in a tone that the young female recognised.

"You're hungry?" Baille looked down at the doll's blonde mop of straight hair. "You are supposed to be asleep; it's night time you know?"

The doll did not sound like it cared, and pushed in vain at the part of the seat restraint that held her to her mistress's torso.

"Okay, hang on." Harte reached to her right side where the toy satchel hung from the upper corner of her seat, below the headrest, the thing swinging and turning away from her grasping fingers. "Dammit."

Wanda went silent, staring up at her with wide, artificial eyes.

"Hey, don't even think of telling your Grandad about Mummy's potty mouth, if you want to get fed."

* * * *

A short time later, with Wanda laying on her back across the top of Baille's right thigh, suckling contentedly on her bottle, the former Imperial had time to think.

She could think at home - the Darth Unlucky - of course, but with the comforting, relaxing aura of grey-blue hyperspace energies rolling over her canopy, she found that she was able to be at peace with herself, and her life.

Dad was right. In his own way. That she could not look after herself.

She had joined the Imperial military as the best route to becoming a starfighter ace. The Fleet Academy would have broken her down, and spat out something that they could handle, a drone who obeyed orders without question. When to stand, when to sit, when to eat, which freshers to use, when and what to eat.

Freed of such constraint and control over her decisions, she had demonstrated to the Twi'lek that she was not up to the challenge, and he had taken that autonomy away from her, as the best way to keep her safe.

Trying to prove to him that she could be capable on her terms, even for something as trivial as doing the dishes, had, because she had done it without permission and unsupervised, only gotten her spanked.

Insisting that she was a grown woman had only gotten her pulled over his knee and slippered for "telling fibs".

But, after being cornered into it, admittedly; accepting wholeheartedly that she was just a little girl again, committing to actually being a well-behaved youngling for her Daddy, showing him that she could be trusted to look after her toys, could be trusted to abide by his restrictions, and above all, do as she was told, when she was told, was currency that she could take to the Bank of Nifesta, and had resulted in the only thing she had ever wanted: to be in the cockpit of a single-seater starfighter, on an operation.

She wondered if he understood all the decisions that he was trusting her to make whilst she was away from his control.

All the dangers that he was allowing her to face, while she raced ahead to get to the young Hoatzeri on Yavin.

He rarely allowed her to visit the craft, so it had not really had a good maintenance schedule. System failures while airborne, in space, hyperspace, enemy action, weather, unforseeable accidents - she'd have been sent to bed if Mitch had thought this through.

The starfighter pilot glanced up from Wanda, to glance over the satisfyingly-green readout lights, feeling very glad that she had chosen to earn the Twi'lek's trust enough that he had sent her on this opportunity to show what she could do.

Even if something went wrong, if he knew that she had done as she was told, and had looked after her dolly, the status quo might stay. And that was even with Wanda grassing her up for swearing.

 

Ibrix Reunion​

Baille, in her frilly-hem'd sundress, stared into the disbelieving eyes on the reptilian little girl, whom she had befriended last year.
The other child was in a Pterosaur Club t-shirt, though Baille could not tell if she had grown into last year's, or if this was a new one.

Et tu, Wanda? Baille thought towards her similarly attired doll, as it shuffled on all fours along her bare legs, towards the child that she obviously remembered from last year, too.

Frilla had grown a little bit, of course; and seemed to be aware that Baille should either have grown too, or stayed the same, but certainly not have lost more than two thirds of her height and body mass.

The Corellian was now considerably closer to the height of the Tiss'hari youngster, but half a foot taller.

They were in one of the bar areas, roofed over to protect from the strong sunlight, but open-sided to allow the briny sea air to sweep through.

There were low, glase-topped circular tables, and cushioned armchairs that seemed to have been woven out of thin dried sticks.

Their respective parents, out of sight, somewhere nearby, had pushed two chairs together to form a kind of manger, and both children were able to sit back in each, with her delicate bare feet, overlapping with Frilla's thick-ankled, clawed ones. They had strict instructions not to climb down.

"Why aren't you bigger?" Frilla addressed the bantha in the room, narrowing her orange eyes.

Harte sighed. Personally, she thought that Mitch was full of **** with his explanation as to why she had regressed from her Twenties, to looking about eight years old, overnight; but the Twi'lek vehemently stuck to his story, and reacted so negatively - going instantly for the slipper - to her merely expressing doubt, not even outright accusing him of lying, that she felt understandably reluctant to broach the subject any further with him.

"I don't remember, but Dad maintains that we encountered a clearly signposted 'Fountain of Youth' on some planet, and that my first thought was to jump in and go for a paddle. That does not sound like me. By time he found a way to get me out, I looked like this." She pressed a finger to the starched bodice, the tip brushing one the small embroidered pink flowers there.

That rankled. Or rather, what she felt under her bodice, did. Her breasts...they always say you don't appreciate things till you don't have them any more. She had a little boy's chest now, completely flat, and no amount of Empire-waisted dresses and layers of air-catching petticoats, were going to redress that.

She wasn't wearing petticoats now, of course; even Mitch recognised that she would melt in this weather.

And apparently, freshwater interferes with his ability to use the Force! After a moment, she relaxed her expression and mood. No sense in Frilla picking up her mood and getting upset as well. "So, how're things with you?"

"Yeah, I'm okay."

A gust of wind blew in from the sun-drenched view behind Frilla, catching Baille's skirt and blowing it up and back to her. She tamped it back down, but not before Frilla pointed a claw at what she had on underneath.

"Oh, you have to wear CatchItAlls now!"

Baille scowled. "Well, I don't need to wear them."

"So why are you?"

Harte pressed both hands down on the sides to help straighten, and craned her neck over the sides of her chair, till she could see Mitch at a curved, bronzium-finished bar area, alongside Frilla's Dad. The Tiss'hari's mother was participating in the pool aerobics.

"Daaad! Frilla wants to know why I'm in CatchItAlls."

Nifesta leaned back from the bar, so he could see and call past Mr Frilla. "It's because you are a baby now, Sweetheart, and it is what babies wear."

Baille lowered herself back down, gazed at her counterpart, and waved an arm in the direction of their fathers. "There you go."

Wanda was now close enough for Frilla to reach up and gather her up, hugging the droid in close, and murmuring how she had missed her.

The parents returned, and sat in the other chairs serving their table. Their was a glass-on-glass clinks as drinks were set down, then Frilla's Dad handed her an ice cream with the cone wrapped in a square white flimsi.

Even seated, Mitch towered over Baille and leaned in with an ice cream for her, then hesitated, elbow resting on the wooden edging of her chair.

"Your CatchItAlls, do you want me to take them down?"

She blinked up at him. She didn't need to wear CIAs, thank you very much, but those words, "take them down", had been deliberately chosen, and had connotations that she was not keen on having realised. An unspoken small print about her not being a happy little bunny, come bedtime.
She looked down from him, her fingers nervously playing with the delicate white ruffles laying gently on her lap. "No."

"Well, quit talking about them."

"Frilla brought them up." A genuine sulky tone entered her voice. It was clear that he was not happy with her.

"What did I just say?"

"Quit talking about them." To end this as soon as possible, and hopefully on a positive note, she apologised softly into her chest. "Sorry, Daddy."

"Atta girl. Now take your ice cream before it melts all over my hand."

Baille's ice cream was brown and when she licked it, tasted like Sunstrike, an alcoholic variant that had been popular among the girls of her V-Wing squadron, during their off-duty hours.

Frilla's was off-white, and sprinkled with little pink cubes of rehydrated Womp Rat.

Each to their own.

Harte attacked her ice cream, enjoying the taste transmitted through her tongue, the sugar rush helping to brighten her mood. This was part of what helped her enjoy her life, and this vacation, now. Warm breeze caressing her, and fluttering at her ruffles.

She glanced up at Frilla, to see her counterpart doing the same with her treat, the epitome of contentment.

Two little girls, together.