Originally posted on Oct 29th, 2015

Djonwi’leka © Myself; Alisa I. Didkovsky
Star Wars: The Old Republic © Bioware

Big Trouble on Little Hutta (Roleplay)

“Are you done yet?” Hera asked, boredly. Everything had went well enough so far. A minor scuffle had broken out while capturing their prey, but that was to be expected when you were trying to bag a bounty. Nothing the two of them couldn’t handle. Hera mumbled at the time about the need to take him alive, even though that’s what you had to do when you planned to profit twice from the same acquisition.

The first drop-off was as easy as could be, it was getting him back that could potentially cause problems. Hera leaned against the outside wall of the building, kicking a dent into the mud that was nearly everywhere that stagnant water wasn’t on Hutta. She glanced over at her current partner in crime, trying to assess just how long it would take him to finish slicing the controls on the door.

“Shh-shh-shh!” Djonwi shushed the Rattataki as he crouched down and worked on slicing through the controls. The system was a little outdated and slow and even the cyborg was getting a little impatient with it lagging to respond to his inputs. Finally, though, the controls accepted their “identification” and the door unlocked. Djonwi gave a sigh of relief and swiftly put his slicing tools back into the compartment in the wrist of his cybernetic arm, pulled the sleeve back down and stood up from the muck. “Ze lady first,” he said quietly and stood back.

She glanced up and down at him before pushing off of the wall and stepping past. Djonwi’s success meant that no guards were waiting for them, not yet at least. Hera unhooked the blaster from her belt regardless. She might get the chance to shoot something if she was lucky. Hera half looked back and beckoned Djonwi inside. The room was dimly lit and filled with various crates and junk, but a glowing panel stood out against the far wall next to the door that led deeper inside. Hera snapped her fingers and pointed towards it, offering no other explanation or order.

“Oh tagwa, miss, nice Djonwi will go press some button an’ pull up map. Easy-easy,” the cyborg muttered and stepped inside after her. He scanned the area quickly as he approached the panel. Recalling the input codes from the security console outside, Djonwi managed to get into the directory quickly and easily with the computer taking his authorisation codes without further complaints.

As soon as a map of the building came up he took out a datachip and downloaded the information. Things were going smoothly, so far at least, but Djonwi couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going to go wrong very soon. Maybe it was just the planet; Hutta was never a place he enjoyed very much. But maybe it was his present company. He didn’t think he was the most patient of people in the galaxy, but Hera’s almost over alertness was making him just a little nervous.

“Zer,” he said, putting the datachip into his datapad. “We ‘ave map. Look like we must descend anozer level. Dee prison cell down below.”

“Sweet.” Hera said, raising her blaster. For the longest second it looked like she was aiming at Djonwi. A bright bolt flew past him and hit the panel, sparking and flashing as the door behind him opened. The air was tense as she waited for an alarm to be raised that never came. Snorting to herself, Hera shrugged and sauntered past Djonwi into the next room. She hadn’t bothered to look at the map, and instead peeked around edges of the corridors which faced them.

Djonwi had ducked a little, catching sight of Hera’s blaster just as it went off, and then watched her quietly as she passed him and into the next room. What was the point of him getting a map if she wasn’t even going to use it? The cyborg tapped at some buttons on his goggles to pull it up on his HUD so that at least one of them would know where they were going, and then trotted after her.

“Be more careful, yes?” He said when he caught up with her. “Maybe you no care if you get shot at, but I do! It ‘urt an’ I no like it.” At that, however, Djonwi pulled out his own blaster just in case, and moved into one of the corridors. “Zis way. May be guard at bottom.”

“It doesn’t hurt to get shot at,” Hera said, letting him lead the way for now.

“Yes, it do,” Djonwi corrected her, and then held up a hand and stopped as he heard a sound. He edged up towards the end of the inclined hall where there stood a Weequay guard with his back towards them. With one quick move Djonwi whacked him over the back of the head with his blaster and down he went. No-one else seemed to approach the corridor—not yet anyway—so he stepped over the unconscious guard and beckoned Hera to follow.

“No it doesn’t,” Hera started, shrugging to herself as she stepped over the Weequay, not even looking back as she aimed her blaster and shot the downed guard, continuing as if nothing happened. “It hurts to get shot, not shot at.”

The cyborg flinched but refused to look back; he knew what happened and he didn’t need to see it. Already he was regretting signing onto this gig with Hera and considered bailing, but the call of all those credits and the threat of the Rattataki very likely shooting him in the back if he tried to sneak away kept him in his place. For now at least.

Djonwi walked just a step behind Hera, filtering through the different sounds that reverberated throughout the underground corridor. They were close, but guards and gangsters were closer; their idle chatter and roughhousing heard around the walls. He lowered his voice as he gave Hera directions, “Straight on about seven metres, an’ zen cell be in room on ze right side.”

She raised one hand, at least having the courtesy to acknowledge she heard him before walking into a definitely not empty hallway. The way Hera moved through the corridor towards the cell was more than vaguely unnerving. It almost seemed like she was just taking a pleasant evening stroll, just one that involved shooting people.

Chaos broke out, but not before she picked off a handful with some disturbingly well aimed shots. She hardly even bared her teeth when return fire grazed her arm, but it was enough to catch her off guard. Another large Weequay charged as Hera grinned, just before she was knocked to the ground. The guard fell on top of her but didn’t move much more than that. Quickly, Hera rolled him off of her, exposing a dagger sticking out of his neck. She ducked to grab it before moving forward again.

Djonwi sighed, which he knew wasn’t exactly the correct response, but now he was being inconvenienced to also shoot and punch people. This could’ve gone so much better—but no, Hera had to go and cause a scene. A few guards made their way to Djonwi but were swiftly and very efficiently taken out with assassin droid-like precision—or near it, anyway.

The cyborg let himself become a weapon briefly, at least until the danger had passed. He was even tempted to take Hera out, but something in his mind told him not to, that she might find some way to come back and take revenge. Instead another guard, and then two more, went down. If Djonwi knew they were going to have a blood bath he’d have worn different shoes.

“Luto,” he said with some sarcasm, “now zat dozen people leaking on ze floor, we get zis Weequay out, tagwa?”

“Well, shit,” Hera said, kicking at one of the bodies before rolling her shoulders and cracking her neck. “These fuckers are useless. I only got shot once.”

Hera looked down, wiping the dagger’s blade sort of clean on her pants, nodding and gesturing with her free hand. “Knock yourself out, babe.”

The cyborg muttered something in Huttese under his breath and walked over to the console by the cell, stepping over a couple of the fallen bodies on the way. The console didn’t take Djonwi’s authorisation keys—no, that would be too simple. He grumbled a little and pulled up his left sleeve and retrieved his tools again to slice into the panel itself.

“Zey need new IT guy,” Djonwi comments quietly, “everysing ‘ere so outdated. Gang ‘ave moulee-rah, no? Zey can update zis poodoo easy. But no, make it stoopa an’ inconvenient…” He complained some more and huffed to himself until finally the console gave in and the cell’s ray shield deactivated.

“Did they kill ‘im yet?” Hera asked, not bothering to move the meter or so needed to see the answer herself.

“No,” Djonwi said and stepped inside the room. Their bounty, a Weequay criminal named Jihf Da’reng, was sat in the corner with a black and blue face; unfortunately for them, he was also out cold. They couldn’t waste even moretime in there, though, so Djonwi just lifted the guy up over his shoulder with a grunt. If nothing else Jihf wasn’t a big guy. “Luto. We go now, yes?”

“Yeah.” She said, for once sticking around long enough to let Djonwi lead the way. “Don’t trip, babe.”

Hera lifted her head, heavy and fast footsteps were approaching from the way they came. She lifted her blaster, shooting past Djonwi for the second time today.

“Cha woy da!” Djonwi yelped at the blaster shot, and then looked up to see the gangsters moving in on them. He kept a good grip on Jihf with his cybernetic arm and then pulled his own blaster out with the other. He hoped Hera could clear the way now just as easily as she did a few minutes prior; it was either that or they’d need to leave the bounty to make a safe getaway. After making a couple shots, Djonwi glanced around to try to see if there was maybe another exit from the lower corridors but it seemed like today just wasn’t their day.

Before he had time to react a fist which was attached to one of the gangsters had met with Djonwi’s head, slamming him in the temple to stop him in his tracks. The blow knocked his goggles off alignment, he misfired at his assailant, and then tried to grab anything beside himself to keep upright as Jihf wasn’t helping him keep his balance at all.

The guard grabbed for Djonwi’s collar, pulling him close enough to head-butt him. Finally Hera looked back from down the hall, noticing Djonwi’s predicament. She frowned and started picking a path back to him, shooting anything in her way. The cyborg saw stars for a moment and dropped their bounty to the floor so he could actually fight back, throwing a fist out at the guard; his own balance, however, was already unsteady from the blows to the head and his goggles relaying visual data improperly.

Unluckily for Djonwi, the attempted punch missed its mark and soon he found himself with his arm and twisted behind him, and his face rammed into the nearby wall for his troubles. The bounty on the floor below him suddenly jerked, seemingly sliding away under its own power.

Hera lifted up the still unconscious body and was already heading for the door, blasting through anyone trying to stop her. She didn’t look back, she was leaving her partner to his fate. A boot met the base of Djonwi’s spine with no small amount of force, he wasn’t going to be let go, not now that he’d been caught.

“Echuta!” Djonwi managed to shout after Hera as he caught sight of her making a hasty exit. He yelped again and grunted at the last blow to his back; the cyborg’s knees buckled and he fell to the floor, dropping his blaster somewhere amongst the fight. Trying to make head or tail of the guards through the glitching HUD of his goggles, Djonwi made one more attempt to strike out at someone and threw his body weight into, well, a guard’s legs hopefully.

While his attempted attack worked, knocking one guard down, it gave the perfect opportunity to another who kicked with all their strength into the poor prone cyborg’s side over and over. His supposed accomplice was long gone as the armoured boot struck for his head.

Herasek © Saljamka

Little Cyborg, Big Swamp

When Djonwi finally came to he was blind and deaf and incredibly sore. The problems with his senses was something with his circuitry, he figured, but he couldn’t do anything about it right now. He was bound to a chair. As he returned to consciousness a bit more information was given to him, though. The smell, for instance, was unmistakable.

“This still Hutta?” He asked in Huttese, hoping someone nearby would be able to restart some system on him to get his other senses re-initialised; Djonwi, however, didn’t feel anyone moving around himself. Just as he was about to force a repair application to run he felt the vibrations of a door open and shut. He wasn’t alone anymore and he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.

It wasn’t one but two people, at the least, who entered. One grabbed the cyborg’s shoulders and held him back to restrain him further whilst the other applied a tool to his head. Djonwi grunted as there was a pressure for a few moments and then a sudden release. Within a few seconds his hearing returned; it was a bit tinny but still manageable. It took at least a minute longer for his sight to do the same, but even then it didn’t come back fully.

His left ocular wasn’t receiving any visual data and his right one was also damaged. His sight appeared in data fragments: some sections were visuals an organic would understand whilst other aspects came back to him in code and needed to be read and filtered through the processor in his head, giving him some delay. Already it was giving him a headache but he knew he’d have to work through it for now. If he had his goggles on they would have been able to take the strain of the data off him.

Djonwi grimaced and turned his head slowly, his eyesight full of errors and missing information dizzying him, and finally found his assailants. He almost couldn’t pick out the figures in the messy and vibrating array of background noise and fleeting imagery, but there were two men with him. Probably. He posed the question again now that there was someone who might listen: “Am I still on Hutta?”

“Yep.”

Djonwi wasn’t sure which one of them said it or if there was yet another person in the room. “Why’re you holding me?” He asked, hoping to the Stars that they would elaborate.

“Why were ya rescuing Jihf?”

“Who?”

He knew who they were referring to. It was Jihf Da’reng, a Weequay with a bounty on his head. Djonwi and Hera weren’t rescuing him, either; they turned him over as a bounty and then wanted to turn him into a second client for double their profits. It wasn’t a bad plan in theory but their execution could have been… better.

Maybe if he had dropped Jihf earlier and made his escape. If that good-for-nothing Hera had helped him instead of dragging the bounty off and leaving on her own. Djonwi still couldn’t believe she did that—just left him there with the guards to fend for himself. Just thinking about it was making his headache worse.

“Jihf Da’reng,” said one of the men who then came closer to Djonwi, grabbed his face with one hand and lifted it so he’d look at him. “Don’t act stupid, ya mechanical freak!”

“I really don’t know who—”

Djonwi yelped as an armoured fist met his face, knocking him back against the chair. He felt some parts of his face go a bit numb, and only then realised that his lekku were senseless, too. He couldn’t, however, deal with the visuals he was receiving as they were only becoming more and more abstract.

The cyborg decided to shut down some more readings which left him with a black and white and very flat image, but he could at leastsomewhat see what was happening and it didn’t feel like his brain would melt. The alert going off in Djonwi’s head about the high priority of assessing his cybernetic damage, however, was forced to be ignored right now and he quietly hoped that wasn’t a death sentence.

“So, lemme ask ya again,” the man said, “why were ya rescuing Jihf? Were ya working with him? Were ya sent for him by the Swamp Wampas Gang?”

“Status: Left optic disconnected…” Djonwi said quietly, robotically, and then snapped back to attention, recalling the questions asked. “Swamp Wampas? Oh, no, no, no!” He smiled innocently and shook his head gently. “Not at all. I was—”

“You was what?”

Another of the men in the room stepped up to the Twi’lek and without warning shocked one of his lekku. Djonwi jumped in his seat, and clenched his sharp teeth tightly, and let out a hiss. The jolt of electricity continued flicking through the web of cybernetics along his lek and he could feel it twitching along his back. Again, his vision went black for a moment and he couldn’t hear. Don’t pass out! Don’t pass out!, he told himself and took a deep breath.

“…I was,” Djonwi spoke slowly and carefully through the pain, “trying to pull a bit of a scam with… someone.”

“What kinda scam, hm?” The man crouched down in front of Djonwi’s face. It was the Weequay guard that head-butted him in the corridors. Fantastic.

“Well ah, it’s actually pretty funny,” Djonwi said with a little pained chuckle. “We turned the bounty in, got paid, all that; but we also saw that this Jihf guy hadtwo bounties on him. Isn’t that funny?”

“No, it ain’t.”

“Heh… We were going to get him out again and turn him into the second person.”

“Two bounties for one,” another man spoke. “Clever.”

“Clever, but stupid.” The Weequay stood back up and left Djonwi’s sight again and continued speaking from somewhere behind him as he took things from a table. “See, Jihf’s gone. He was my traitor of a little brother and we were gonnare-educate him, if you know what I mean.”

“Mm, sure,” Djonwi nodded. He tried to discern what was going on behind him, though, but it was no use; with his senses so dulled, he could just barely make out what was being spoken directly to him. And then there it was. The sound was rather loud and for someone who worked so much with speeders and droids there was no mistaking it.

Power tools.

Djonwi felt like his heart leapt up into his throat and then sank down into his second stomach. He needed to think fast to get out of here before they dismantled him. The parts were replaceable, sure, but a number of them he required to live. The cyborg briefly re-activated his visual readings despite his processor’s warnings.

A sharp pain immediately shot through his head at that. He wasn’t organically created to take in and parse so much information at once, but he needed to have at least a few seconds of a look. If there was any way out he’d be able to find it this way. Everything was locked, however, and he couldn’t turn around in his chair to see much else.

Where was his other optic? That question was bothering him immensely, but another sharp pain made him choke on air and he quickly shut off the extra visual readings. Djonwi was certain he was done for. He couldn’t send an S.O.S. out without his goggles and various processing systems were now shutting down. It didn’t seem like Djonwi’s backup system was going to be of any use either; there was internal physical damage which couldn’t be repaired now without replacement parts.

The Weequay returned to Djonwi’s sight and lifted his head up again. This time he was inspecting the various cybernetics. The cyborg saw him bring a tool up to his face and he cringed as it clanked around in the empty cavity where the cybernetic optic should have been. The man pulled on some more wiring until Djonwi suddenly jolted back in his seat with the room spinning.

“System shutdown imminent,” Djonwi said mechanically and just sat still in his chair. He hadn’t given up—not yet—but he was terrified to fight too much, especially now that something was burning, too. Oh stars, what were they doing to him?

“Cobah,” the Weequay said and ripped the left sleeve of Djonwi’s coat off, and then the shirt underneath. “Take that arm off, will ya?”