In Hyperspace, No One Can Hear You Scream

[Mana Corrick]

The droid emerged to the sound of one voice grumbling and another panicking. Prioritizing the former, BD trotted over to Mana, staring up at her as she read over the system readouts with her inefficient, human eyes. Not that such things were her fault; she couldn't be amazing at EVERYTHING after all. Bumping his head into her leg insistently, the droid emitted a muted facsimile of the klaxon from earlier as his holoprojector flickered to life, throwing up a clean schematic between them. One section pulsed red—tight, specific, not the whole system. Just the fault. He adjusted the display once, highlighting a secondary stress point branching off it.

Then he looked up at her, letting out a brief, pointed chirp and dropping a hydrospanner at her feet.

Mana furrows her eyebrows, looking down at her leg, wondering if a sensor component had shaken itself loose. But its just BD. She sits on her haunches, watching intently as the little droid flashes schematics at her. She clicks her tongue and makes a noise of dismay. She had just fixed that part, too.

Scooping up the hydrospanner, she gives BD-86 a pat on the head assembly before heading for the vents again. Of course, she doesn't bother to tell Sindren what's going on. That'd take too long, and they've all got places to be. Apparently.

But the noises echoing through the ship don't tell of an easy repair. There's banging. Yelling. The SHRIPPING of meshtape echoing through the vents.

Anyone who came across Mana in the tight space would be amazed by her ability to contort herself into tight spaces, as she's on top of the rounded, cylindrical device, holding panels in place with her knees as she jams things back into their proper spot and rips strips of adhesive with her teeth. Its not pretty. But it'll hold.

Just like Mana, in a way.

Before Sindren knows what hit him, the lights in the cockpit flicker back on, and the familiar hum of the sublights rumbles beneath his feet.

[BD-86]

BD watched Mana go, chirping contentedly at having contributed.

"Rancor's tits! What WAS that? Are we going to die? What's wrong with the ship?"

The droid turned toward the panicking woman, plodding awkwardly up to her. Elevated heart rate. Elevated surface temperature. This sort of thing seemed unfortunately common with this particular human while onboard the ship, though it intensified multiple times over in the event of minor disasters such as the one they were dealing with now.

Puzzling over the situation for a moment, BD cycled through his databanks for something that could prove useful in this situation. Something... calming? As he reached the archives of music he'd surreptitiously duplicated from Sindren's personal files, some "classics" showed up. BD's head assembly rotated in place to focus on Tessia again, his manipulator reaching out and softly connecting with her leg. This was what humans did when they were trying to calm each other down, right? Usually the fleshy hand bit was supposed to go on the shoulder coupling, but Bd-86 was only about 45 cm tall, which made this a difficult ask.

His holoprojector kicked to life again, a series of binary blips and beeps sounding out as a message appeared on the wall:

<DEPLOYING SMOOTH JIZZ>

A moment later, Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes began to play from the front of the droid. They weren't the MOST popular, but what snippets of discussion BD had picked up in a cursory search across the HoloNet seemed to categorize them as "pleasant", "classic", and "Those bastards killed Evar Orbus, Kark em'".

[Tessia Sarn]

BD's head assembly rotated in place to focus on Tessia again, his manipulator reaching out and softly connecting with her leg. This was what humans did when they were trying to calm each other down, right? Usually the fleshy hand bit was supposed to go on the shoulder coupling, but Bd-86 was only about 45 cm tall, which made this a difficult ask.

Tessia, predictably, startles when BD-86 gently touches her leg. After her initial outburst, she had pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes and she murmurs something indistinct under her breath over and over again.

And then she yelps. It's completely undignified, and she would be embarrassed if she hadn't just, in very short succession, shoved a package of blue macarons into her mouth (and talked to the captain with her mouth full), referenced a rancor's private bits, and almost hyperventilated due to a combination of panic and illicit cookie crumbs down the wrong pipe. As it is, she takes her hands away from her face and looks down in complete surprise.

"Er... hello? Can I..." Tessia starts, falters, then tries to finish, only to be cut short. "Help you with..."

His holoprojector kicked to life again, a series of binary blips and beeps sounding out as a message appeared on the wall:

<DEPLOYING SMOOTH JIZZ>

A moment later, Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes began to play from the front of the droid. They weren't the MOST popular, but what snippets of discussion BD had picked up in a cursory search across the HoloNet seemed to categorize them as "pleasant", "classic", and "Those bastards killed Evar Orbus, Kark em'".

She's left with her mouth hanging open in complete dumbfounded surprise. Tessia looks from the projected message to the little droid, then back and forth one more time. Her lips twitch. She wants to laugh. She wants to cry. She wants to pick up the droid and plant a great big kiss right on the head assembly. Never one to shy away from whatever emotion decides to push its way to the front of her consciousness, she lets the moisture welling up in her eyes roll down over her cheeks. Crying, yeah. Smiling too.

"Thank you," she says, and for once, it's not panic. She says it slowly and deliberately and earnestly. "I..." absolutely cannot usually stand smooth jizz "love this song."

She settles for reaching down to shake BD's manipulator in gratitude. His head assembly's a little gross right now.

[Kel Hannix]

When the klaxon sounds, Kel freezes.

You might mistake it for composure if you don't know her well - which is the case with most people (and droids) in the room. Her face is expressionless; her mouth pressed tight shut so no sound escapes. She stands firm when Tessia grabs hold of her, not wincing in the slightest. So you might think she was stoic, that she'd heard a thousand klaxons and felt the thrum of a thousand TIE fighters before.

She has heard a thousand klaxons. And when you hear a siren or horn on Kel's level, you freeze.

But BD can probably sense the butterfly-fast flutter of her heart, the subtle change of her breath intake and output…and can sense that after the music starts, her tension begins to ease.

"Hey," Kel says, under the music. It comes out faint and stiff, so she clears her throat and tries again. "Hey, lil guy." She gives BD's leg a fond little nudge with her foot - she's thinking clearly enough now to think that it would be weird if both her and Tessia bent over him - and even manages a crooked little smile. "Thanks."

And then she can finally answer the question that Tessia asked. "We're not gonna die." That, Kel can always declare with complete certainty. (Even if she doesn't want to think too hard about how she might know that the opposite was true.) "It's okay. You're okay." Her voice is soft, her hand gentle where it pats Tessia's shoulder comfortingly.

"Probably just an Imperial patrol. They like to fly too close, just to show they can." A faint edge, bitter and sharp, bites at the edges of her words. It eases, though, as she continues, "If they haven't stopped us by now, then they're not going to."

[Sindren Lorn]

The gentle thrum Sindren could feel reverberating through the Ember's hull brought a smile to the man's face.

Somehow that kid had come through again. Guess I'll keep her around after all, he thought with a chuckle as he reached to dim the cockpit lights to 28 percent. They were a bit intense at full after sitting in the dark for a few minutes.

Sindren gave the throttle an experimental bump and the ship reacted exactly how it was supposed to. Maybe even a bit smoother than before.

He was about to shout his thanks into the vent shaft opening above him, but the sound of something absolutely abhorent wafted its way through from the lounge area.

Jizz.

Smooth JIzz.

He had a strict no Jizz policy on the Ember, but apparently someone hadn't gotten that message. Again he found himself pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. Admittedly the music was a welcome respite from the agitated shouting it seemed to replace so he supposed he'd let it go this time. He could tune it out easily enough.

Bumping the sublight engines to just shy of full, he focused on the route to Coruscant ahead, being especially mindful of any errant TIEs.