It felt like the Force was laughing at her as Aran lifted her head, pausing and hissing at the sharp pain on her ribs as she dodged around something on the ground - a crate? - and bit her lip. She'd been trying to finish her slice - or pulling her slice, to be entirely correct - from the Hutt's building when a security patrol had found her. Even if she was remembering how to fight she fell back on the Force too much, which was why, as a precaution, she'd taken to using the sonar implant from Zhaura coupled with a dampener.
Which meant that when she'd hesitated between going for a blaster and pulling a crate onto the guard's head he'd shot her. The blaster score down her side was a reminder that she was having issues. The bruising on her hand was a further reminder that guards wore armor and she'd left her gauntlets off. She'd ended up ditching the system after the scuffle, running the destruction sequence and a program to blaze the now-familiar Black Barge symbol across a advert to give her time to flee, the unconscious guard hopefully babbling about defeating a possible Barge agent attacking the Hutt when he woke up.
The same small building, plascreet and durasteel and devoid of anything memorable, stuck in a section of the moon that felt like a down-trodden transplant from Kaas City itself, and Aran keyed the door, hood pulled up to cast a shadow over her whitened features. The small holo device from her dead drop was on the desk, untouched. A beep, soft chime in her ear and the woman hesitated before she turned towards the display.
"Playback."
The screens blazed to life, on the left showing the IDRI interview which made Aran first grimace, then softly laugh, then hiss. Eilex Arloss. Miha - which was humorous, someone finding Miha when the woman was someone who came up during her chat with Raxino'vel about the GFC. And now she knew about the Barge? The idea of Macelis the leader of the Barge was more than hilarious but she hated the prickling on the back of her neck that cards were piling high and one little flick would put a cross-hair on her for some reason.
On the right was the response - and that stopped her cold in her tracks. Her mind raced, trying to correlate species with patterns. A shapeshifter? That threw her entire investigation off kilter. She remembered what the Zabrak - it had seemed to be a Zabrak - had looked like to her sight and she shook her head. She'd missed something so huge?
Rubbing the back of her neck Aran finally sat down, picking up an old cube and tossing it in the air before catching it as she thought, shifting occasionally to take the sting from the burn off her mind. She didn't know what species were shapeshifters. She didn't know how she could miss this. She felt a cool chill again, recalling the tone from Kashira - twice, the threats and stings to pride - and then she remembered the utter certainty in Lexum's voice as that same threat was repeated. It was a threat she weighed now, detaching her emotions to add up the facts she had in her command.
With a shapeshifter the feelings of trust she could get from common companions and friends was limited. It explained the certainty the Barge exercised. It opened new problems and new questions - who was manipulating the underworld for their bids for power?
Sanguine's contract to track A'tria and Freylan and find the GFC cells was going to take on a whole new, personal meaning shortly.
"Recall, blueprints, Taris."
Now it felt like she had no choice but to stay with the Barge because now she knew she didn't know enough. Which meant in two days she had a mission to face.
"Bring me a whiskey and some kolto," she muttered to the silent droid in the background, cube set down and aside as she sunk into what preparations she could, in conscience, make.
Two day's time and she'd be painting Artia much more realistically than she had before. It'd mean blood. Death. Because she couldn't see another way to get and do what needed to be done. Someone else would pull back and tell themselves to not get their hands dirty, that this is enough... Aran shook her head absently as she studied, sipping the whiskey. Those are the idealist people I have to protect, so they can keep thinking that.
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