The rain fell in sheets on the small city of Kadiak, one of many industrial settlements on the planet Orrikall, drenching the buildings and paved streets. If one was to go from the spaceport at the edge of the city and head west down Third Street, they would find a great number of back-alley shops selling any number of exotic and hard-to-find wares. One such shop was Lorn’s Lost Treasures, a simple looking establishment that advertised itself as an antique shop.
Lorn Velmarky, the owner and namesake of the shop, busied himself this dreadful evening with the annual inventory. He was a Sullustan that had beaten the odds of the Outer Rim and made it to a ripe old age. Lorn stood at an average height of around five and a half feet, and was vaguely humanoid in shape like others of his species, very large ears, large, solid black eyes and a bald scalp filled out the rest of it. His face was littered with all the signs of aging. Deep wrinkles dominated his features and heavy bags hung from beneath his eyes.
A rapping at the front door forced him to set aside his current work with a few grumbles under his breath. Making towards the front of his curio shop he tended to favor his left leg with a limp. Cracking open the door, his aging eyes found the drenched pair who darkened his doorstep at this late hour: Rarity stood beside the battered Simon, who used her surprisingly sturdy form to keep himself from falling to the ground.
The old Sullustan had to chuckle at the disheveled pair. “You kids certainly took your time getting here.” He motioned them through the door. “C’mon now, get in here before you catch a cold.”
Dry clothes, Rarity had never been quite so happy to be in a tacky oversized bathrobe in her life. The warm and fluffy material of the dull green robe melted the ice that had encased her bones and ran through her veins. On one of the couches, her companion was sitting back in the comfortable looking cushions of the seat. Clad in an old pair of loose-fitting dark pants, he was bruised, bandaged, and drifting between being lucid and half-asleep.
“Sorry ‘bout the mess.” Lorn’s gruff voice called from one of the adjoining rooms. “Simon failed to mention he was bringing a lady friend with ’im.”
Simon snorted at the mention of “friend” while rolling his eyes at the thought. “More like a burden.”
His biting comment was quickly retorted with a swift flick of her tail at one of his bruises. Grabbing the side of his face where he had been struck, the smuggler snarled a few curses under his breath. Before he could retaliate, their host entered the room with a platter loaded down with several glasses and a still-steaming kettle.
With a pleasant smile he began pouring them all a cup of piping hot liquid. “I just wish he’d at least told me you were…”
“A Pony?” She asked in an attempt to finish his sentence.
“So lovely.” Lorn corrected her with a roguish grin.
Blushing profusely, Rarity quickly looked off to the side. “Why, Mr. Velmarky, you are quite the flatterer.”
“I wouldn’t put much stock in it.” Simon cautioned her. “Ol’ Lorn is one of the galaxy’s most notorious con men.”
“Former con man,” Lorn quickly corrected the younger scoundrel, “as well as a once renowned thief, an unparalleled pilot, and one of the best freelancers this side of the Kessel Run,” he said proudly as he passed around the glasses of warm dark drink. “All of which is now very far behind me. This here is my life now.” Lorn said motioning to the knick knacks on the walls and the stacks or random items around them. “Selling off the treasures and junk I’ve collected up over the decades.”
“Some of which he even got legally.” Simon snidely pointed out.
The old Sullustan gave him a wide mischievous grin at the comment. “If the best investigators in both the GA and the Empire couldn’t prove that, neither can you kid.”
When their laughter died down, the aged spacer’s mood shifted to a more serious one. “Now then, which one’a you is gonna to tell me what happened out there?”
“What makes you think anything happened?” Simon quickly countered him. “Can’t one of your old protégé’s stop by for a visit?”
Lorn leveled his large dark eyes with Simon’s and stared through his flimsy excuse. “Ya show up at my front door beaten to a pulp, blaster holes in yer’ clothes, an’ smellin’ of ozone. If you weren’t in some kinda firefight then I’m a Hutt’s dancin’ girl.”
Rarity looked back and forth between Lorn and Simon. It was rather similar to watching her father scold Sweetie Belle for her constant chaotic hunt for a cutie mark. “There was a slight incident.” Rarity replied before taking a casual sip of her tea. “Nothing that Simon was unable to handle I can assure you. I would dare say Mr. Velmarky, you’ve taught him quite well.”
Simon stared in shock at the Unicorn’s words. This was the most opportune time to tear into him for all the indignities he’d put her through, but instead she was praising him. Was this some kind of mercy? No, Simon refused to believe that she was doing this out of the kindness of her heart. There was more to this, there was always more to these kinds of situations. He quickly reasoned that she was going to hold onto this until she needed to blackmail him or something.
Lorn focused his attention on the Unicorn taking up residency on the loveseat across from him. Mentally he tried to make her budge, show some kind of cracks in her claims of the young spacer’s competency. She met his gaze with confidence and ease, a cool and collected demeanor that refused to falter. A small smile returned to his lips as she proved harder to discern than he’d assumed at first glance.
“Please, call me Lorn m’dear,” he insisted.
Hot water, such a simple thing, can be so amazing. Rarity let out a joyful sigh as the heated liquid cascaded from the shower head. Her muscles relaxed, letting all the pain they’d held since the start of this chaos melt away. She mused a moment on the how the simple act of cleaning one’s self was much akin to shedding one’s troubles and burdens. If only the same could be said for her mind.
In her relaxed state, the floodgates of her mind began to crack. Images and moments started to blend and run free through her. Happy, joyful times with her friends and loved ones pushed their way to the front of her mind. Posing as her friend Applejack in order to show her sister how much she truly cared for her, risking life and limb alongside her friends to keep their homes and people safe. The memories and many more started to blend and shift becoming one long stream of coherent thought. One dark and horrible thought shouldered its way to the forefront of all of them though. Would she ever see them, Ponyville, or even Equestria ever again?
Despite her posh appearance and mannerisms, Rarity was no stranger to dangerous situations. She had sweet talked a Dragon into almost giving up a portion of his hoard. She’d fought hoof to hoof against the Changeling army when it invaded Canterlot. Rarity had faced down some of Equestria’s most notorious villains and never faltered. She had been on the front line in her world’s brief siege from the terrorists known as Deathwatch and seen the carnage and destruction they could sow in their wake.
But through it all she had her friends at her side. There was always somepony there at her back that she could rely on to lend her strength and confidence. Now here she was, lightyears from home, all alone and surrounded by strange and violent beings. Very much like her experience in the Diamond Dogs’ caves, except no amount of whining would get her out of this jam. What if she never saw Equestria again? What if that rushed holo-call was the last her friends and family would ever have to remember her by? The gravity of it all was finally crushing down on her, making her knees buckle and tears mix with the water already running down her face.
No, she couldn’t let herself fall apart. Not here, not now. She was going to see her home again, her friends and family, even that pair of stallions that lived next door and made for good cheap labor . She would make it through this because she wasn’t alone.
Though she was pained to admit it, she at least had Simon. Granted, he was rude, abrasive, and at times rather insensitive, but unlike most she’d met so far, he hadn’t tried to shoot her. In his own way, he’d done what he could to help her and keep her safe, as questionable as most of it was, but she was still alive after all. That counted for something. Rarity had only known the spacer for a little over two days now, but he seemed rather sincere about his intentions to get her home safely.
Her thoughts finally coming back under control, she magically reached out and shut off the valves, stopping the flow of water. Pulling back the shower curtain, she stepped into the steam filled bathroom and trotted her way to the mirror. With a soggy forelimb, she wiped the fog away from the glass and examined herself. Most importantly to her, she examined the damage her mane had been put through.
Rarity bit down on her lip as she lifted her soaking strands into the air to get a better look at them. A few edges of her mane had been singed from constant blaster fire, a still blackened hole was in the middle of a sizable chunk and there was a portion that hung near her face that had been sliced away by that light sword thing. The whole thing looked absolutely atrocious and was almost driven to tears again.
With a heavy heart, she steeled herself for what she knew had to be done. Her magic reached out and hefted a pair of scissors and a comb into the air. “It’ll be alright, Rarity, I hear short manes are in this year.” She reminded herself before setting to work.
A much cleaner and slightly less soggy Rarity trotted her way down the hall leading back towards the parlor she had been in earlier. Her mane was still wrapped up in a towel and the rest of her body was once again clad in the same tacky robe from before. When she drew closer, her ears were treated to the sounds of hushed yet aggravated voices.
Rolling her eyes, she braced herself for yet one more bump in this seemingly endless cycle. No doubt Simon had done something to offend his “mentor”, she would more than likely have to turn the charm up in order to defuse the situation. But as she got closer, the subject of the conversation caused her to hesitate.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve keepin’ this from me, Simon.” Lorn growled. “She was one of my closest friends, an’ ya don’t even have the courtesy to tell me about this.”
“I… I was going to tell you Lorn,” Simon explained in an oddly weak tone, “I just… I wanted to find Kaily first.”
“Sith’s blood, kid, you mean she doesn’t know yet?”
“You know how she is.” Simon reminded him. “If she doesn’t want to be found, she’s not going to be found. Just my luck that happened to be right now…”
Rarity heard the old alien give a sigh followed by the sounds of a body meeting the fabric of one of the arm chairs. “When did this happen?”
“Three days ago.” Simon replied with a tired groan. “It happened right after I took that Gaian girl’s job. Plan was, drop off the cargo, somehow find Kaily and then head home. Serif certainly put a wrench in that plan.”
That photo quickly returned to Rarity’s mind. The girl in that photo, Simon had been so defensive of it. She quickly squelched a gasp with her hoof, her eyes widening in realization. Had something happened to that girl? And who was this Kaily, had something happened to her as well?
“You’re damn lucky someone beat me to it, otherwise I’d’ve beat the tar out’a ya myself.” Lorn grumbled.
Rarity hugged the wall beside her when the still fuming Sullustan trudged out of the room. Their eyes met for a moment and her body locked up in panic. Lorn however barely regarded her as he strode past, leaving the somewhat confused Unicorn lingering in the hall alone.
For a moment she stayed in the spot, unsure of whether or not it was alright to enter the room. Finally finding the courage to move her hooves, she plastered on the most casual face her fatigued state of mind could muster. She found Simon sitting slumped over in one of the chairs, his head in his hands. When his gaze lifted at her approach, she found herself frozen once more.
An empty silence drifted between the pair, neither saying a word to the other. Cautiously, a warm smile came to her features as she pushed further into the room. “How are you feeling, Simon?”
“I’ll be even better once the painkillers start kicking in.” He replied with a lazy grin.
“That’s a relief,” she said with a happy sigh as she removed the towel from her head, shaking the last droplets of moisture from her mane. “I was actually afraid with the way you kept passing out, that you might not make it this far.”
A twinge of sadness entered her as she caught sight of her own reflection. Her once proud luscious curls of lavender were now replaced with a far shorter mane style. Though the tresses still maintained some of the bouncing curl they had been trained into, they hung close framing her face. Glancing back towards Simon she gave a worried smile.
“Be honest, how do I look?” She asked giving a few of the curly strands a bounce with her hoof.
Simon examined the Unicorn for a moment before asking, “What, cut your hair or something?” The critical glare she quickly affixed on him brought his good arm up in defense. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding, it looks nice,” Simon assured her, “cute even.”
A touch of red bled through the fur of her cheeks. “Why thank you, Simon.” Her mood however took a swift shift, becoming more serious. “Things have become far more complicated haven’t they?”
It was the question he knew was on the way, but had been hoping he could avoid. “Yeah,” he groaned in response. “Sorry about that, Princess. I think it’s going to take me a bit longer to complete my contract with you.”
With a tired groan she dropped herself onto the couch. “Please tell me this doesn’t happen often.”
“Not always. Sometimes it actually gets dangerous.” He replied with a wry grin.
Rarity quickly sat up to give him a burning glare. “Don’t even joke about that.” She snapped at him. “You and I barely escaped that place with our lives and you were almost sucked into space for Celestia’s sake!”
“Yeah, and we’re still alive, I’d call that a win.” Simon snapped back at her.
“And what happens next time when your luck runs out?” She asked with a glare. “What happens next time Simon, when some hoodlum hired by one of those cutthroats finds us and puts a blaster bolt through you?”
“You’d get a refund for starters.” He replied flatly, meeting her glare for glare.
Her frustration had reached a boiling point. There was very little Rarity could do to hold her emotions in check as her forelimbs shook with the urge simply grab him by the collar and thrash some sense into him. She could feel a touch of wetness starting to fill in at the corners of her eyes and her teeth starting to grind against each other.
“Would you stop talking like that,” Rarity snarled at him, “what makes you think I would even care about the blasted credits at that point!? Are you so selfish and self-centered that you think so little of everypony else around you?! All I want is to get through this ordeal and return home to my family and friends!”
Her tirade paused a moment giving her a chance to regain a bit more of herself. “Back on the station we could have escaped when your robot brought us the ship. Instead you thought to try attacking Vrax again and now you can barely stand. What if he’d killed you?”
The overflowing frustration had taken its toll and left the mare feeling even more drained than before. Dropping her head onto the pillow that had been left on the furnishing for her she let out an angry sigh. She needed to look away from him, lest she continue on her angry rant. Rarity tightly shut her eyes trying to hold back the tears that wanted to desperately to flow free. With a calming breath, she brought herself back under control.
“As hard as it is for me to admit this, Simon, I need you.” She confessed sullenly. “Back home, I’ve faced my fair share of trials by fire and come out stronger for it. Out here though, I am all alone and out of my element, and it scares me.”
Simon sat silent for a time as her words raged around in his head. She certainly had a lot of nerve, trying to single him out like that, break him down with her guilt trip. And like he’d buy that big speech about not caring about the money, credits meant everything in the galaxy. She was just trying to get back at him for all those things he put her through back on Star Forge. Or maybe she was just trying to see how easy he was to push around emotionally so she could get what she wanted later on. But if all that was true, then why did Simon suddenly feel so small and worthless right now?
He let that silence slip in between them once again, the words he knew he had to say refused to make the trip past his lips. Biting down hard on his pride, Simon forced himself to speak up. “I admit, you have a point there, Princess. I’m sorry.” Those words were a punch in his gut. “This is nothing that you signed up for when we set up the contract and I’m sorry for that. But like I said before, I’m going to fix this and I’m going to get you home. I haven’t failed a contract yet.”
A voice in his head reminded him he had one more thing to say to her. “Also, I guess I kinda really owe you one for saving me back on the station. Thanks, Rarity.” He said with a great deal of reluctance.
Rarity stared straight ahead at the wall opposite the couch, part of her wanting to simply leave him stewing in whatever guilt he’d managed to accumulate. But bitter acts would do neither of them any good.
“Think nothing of it, Simon.” She breathed out. “I couldn’t very well just leave you there to die, now could I? However, your apology is accepted.”
One thing was still bugging him though, burrowing into the back of his mind despite all his attempts to ignore it. “Rarity, back on the station, how exactly did you get us from that hallway into the hangar?”
“To put it simply, darling, teleportation,” she replied casually with a yawn, “not exactly a normal spell from my repertoire, but thank Celestia it actually worked as I’d hoped.”
Her answer only filled him with more questions and more than a few red flags. “And what could have happened if things had gone wrong?”
“Well, from what Twilight explained to me about it, we took a brief jaunt from where we were in the hallway, to another point of existence then back to our own some distance away.” She started to explain while trying to curl up on the couch. “There are actually quite a lot of things that could go wrong, especially with a blind jump like the one we made. We could have come out the other end inside of a wall, one of the crates, even Vrax depending on where he was standing at the time. It’s one of the reasons we were some distance off the floor, I wanted to avoid that hazard at the least. When the spell is line of sight, teleportation is more or less foal-proof, but without any idea of where one is going, the odds of survival become understandably low. There’s a reason very few Ponies ever learn or try to use teleportation magic, one mistake has the potential to end your trip pretty quickly.”
Simon ran all of this information through his head and could only find one thing he knew and understood that was remotely similar. But that wasn’t possible, even for a Force user, wasn’t it? If it was, that meant that she essentially had performed something akin to a localized jump through hyperspace from the way she described it. It all sounded about the same, even the hazards of it. It still didn’t seem possible though, no living creature could possibly do something like that without the mountain of technology that was a hyperspace engine. All of this was becoming more than his tired mind could easily handle.
“You know what, I’m too tired and pumped full of painkillers to make sense of this junk.” Simon complained, rubbing his temples. “I’ll talk to you in the morning, Princess.”
“Good night, Simon.” Rarity snickered in reply.
Evening never really seemed to come to the planet of Nar Shaddaa, not that anyone could ever tell what time of day it was. Thick clouds of smog filled the sky with massive towers of metal and glass blotting out the sun. The plant was constantly illuminated by the undying neon lights that never seemed to go out. High above the clouds of smog however, one could see the sky, a privilege that only the wealthiest could enjoy, a privilege that Serif gladly enjoyed.
Reclining at the desk at the end of his office, Serif had something far more entertaining to look at than the sky. He watched the pair of scantily clad females gyrate and grind the solitary pole that had been set up. A large office above the smog and beautiful women at his beckon call, these were just a few of the perks of working for a Hutt.
Serif’s enjoyment however was cut short as an indicator built into the polished surface of his desk began flashing. He rolled his eyes in annoyance before motioning to the women to leave. Once he was alone, the holo-projector built into his desk sparked to life, creating the scaled down image of an Ubese.
“Vrax,” he stated in a flat business tone, “I thought we agreed you wouldn’t contact me until you finished your half of the deal.”
“Plans have changed, Serif,” the masked figure snarled at him. “Your courier saw to that.”
With a raised eyebrow, he leaned forwards towards the projection. “What do you mean?”
“First of all, the little pest showed up to the meeting with some kind of Force witch.” Vrax said with a strong hint of venom. “To top it all off, they spaced the package!”
“Could you repeat that?” Serif asked with a snarl. “Did you just say that one of the most valuable items in the galaxy just got sucked out into space? Do you have any idea how far this sets back all of our plans!?”
“I’m very well aware of that.” Vrax barked in response. “I’m going to find your little friend and his woman, and then I’m going to take every credit out of him and his little girlfriend, one drop of blood at a time. I just thought I’d let you have a heads up before you started getting the clean up bills.”
With his threat in place, Vrax’s image vanished from the holo-projector, leaving Serif to sit fuming in the dimly lit office. Gone, how could the contents of that cargo pod be gone just like that? It had cost him billions of credits to procure the contents of the crate and even more to set up the deal. Now it was gone, all of those credits, all that time, all those plans, gone.
R8-Z7 scooted along the corridors of the Meaningless Venture, going about his usual tasks and chores. The little astromech had his work cut out for him with all the busted panels and mess after his rough landing back on Starforge. Still, it had gotten the desired results and helped him save his master and companion. Whistling a happy little electronic tune to himself, he welded a section of wall back into place.
It had been some time since his master and the companion left to seek repairs for the damage they had sustained. Z7 didn’t mind though, he enjoyed these moments to himself. They were welcomed moments that gave him a chance to let his mind wander while putting his metallic hand attachments to work. Tonight’s subject was whether or not the concept of sight still applied to him even with electronic supplements in lieu of organic eyes or never having technically had natural sight. It skirted the taboo issues of self awareness, but thankfully avoided going too far over that line. He was well aware of how short a Droid’s life span could become if limitations were pushed too far.
As he rounded about the lounge area of the ship, something caught his attention. A rather familiar looking package now that he searched his memory banks. He had been sure that his master had dropped that off back on the space station. Perhaps he had made a mistake. They were rare but he was understanding of his master’s shortcomings. He was only organic after all. Taking the box in his metallic grip, he returned it to the cargo storage bay for safe keeping and made a quick note to bring this to his master’s attention. With a happy tune once more being whistled to himself, R8-Z7 went back to his merry work.