Apr. 28th, 2019 10:36 am
Short fic: Jyn and Kay are Buds
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skitzofreakPrompt: Positivity
Jyn skids around the corner, her filthy boots slipping in the ankle deep mud that covers this part of the planet, and finds herself three steps from a dead end. Behind her, the heavy, squishy footsteps of her pursuer pound loudly through the muck – only seconds away from rounding that same corner and finding her gasping for air with nothing but an empty blaster, a broken vibroblade, and what’s probably a busted right arm.
Not her best day.
She slams hard against the wall as if it might magically open up to reveal a hidden passageway. No such luck. There is a door tucked against the far left wall, but it’s made of solid metal and has at least two locks that she can see at a glance. No time to pick it, no time to –
“Hells, you’re a fast one,” the asshole who plans to sell her to the Empire pants as he appears at the opening to the alley. Jyn eyes him – almost two meters tall, at least one hundred kilos, wearing metal and leather-worked armor over his vital bits, shit, he’s even got a kriffing helmet and gorget. If she’s quick (and she does not feel quick right now, not with pain lancing down through her right side and blood oozing into her left eye and…damn it, her left bootheel has come loose, she knew she should have taken up Cassian’s offer to get new ones, damn the boot, damn her arm, damn this jackass) – if she’s quick, she might get her broken blade into his eye. She might at least break his crooked, filthy nose.
She shifts her weight, ready to spring as he stomps through the mud towards her. He sees it, and grins. His teeth are shockingly white and clean and straight, wildly contrasting with his worn and muddy clothes, his worn and even more muddy face. “No good, sweetheart,” he says in a light tone. He sounds almost kindly, like a grown up speaking to a frustrated child. “Won’t do you, no use trying. You’re hurt, and worse,” he stops a few steps out of reach and makes a show of looking her over, taking in her slumped shoulders and her heaving chest, the sweat on her skin and the pale cast of her face, “you’re exhausted.”
He lunges forward, and Jyn gets her good arm up but he’s coming too fast and she is hurt and she is exhausted and oh fuck here it comes close your teeth together and breathe out –
A shriek of twisting metal, a startled shout, a sharp snap, and then…Jyn opens her eyes.
“The typical organic decreases in efficiency by seventeen percent for every hour of physical fatigue beyond standard operating levels,” a crisp electronic voice says from somewhere far above Jyn’s head. The jackass trying to sell her is whimpering and clawing at his arm, and also appears to be…hovering in the air? Ah, no. Jyn tilts her head back and despite herself, smiles up at the tower of scratched black metal and faded silver paint.
“Frustratingly, all organic beings have individual and highly non-standardized operating levels,” K2SO continues, his glowing yellow optics focused on the pale and sweating face of the thug, oblivious to the way the man writhes in his grip, the arm in Kay’s grip clearly broken. “And they do not come with operating manuals,” Kay adds, his voicebox shifting into a distinct tone of disapproval that Jyn knows all too well.
“Neither do you,” she murmurs with a smile that warps into a grimace, leaning back against the wall and running her good hand carefully up her right arm, feeling for the – shite, yeah, there it is, definitely a break…right…there.
Kay’s head twists away from the dangling thug to look at her for a moment, his optics telescoping on her and flickering to blue for a moment, which she’s learned means he’s giving her a brief CT scan. “My hardware is largely standardized and my specifications easily researched. There is a linear fracture in your right ulna.”
“Makes it easier to hack you,” Jyn points out, rolling up her muddy sleeve and fumbling her scarf off her neck. It isn’t much, but she can wrap it tight enough around her forearm to stabilize the fracture until she gets some bone stabilizers from the medkit in their ship. It will make some ugly bruises on her arm and hurt like a bitch for a few days, but should heal up fine.
The thug (or rather, slaver, Jyn decides – the Empire wouldn’t have kept Jyn alive long enough to be a laborer, but as far as the thug was concerned, she was meat to be sold) hisses a string of invectives and tries to twist out of Kay’s grip. The move only makes his arm bend even further into an improbable shape, and he whimpers, fat tears streaming down his dirty face and leaving trails in the grime. Kay turns his head back to regard the slaver impassively. “That is why I specified ‘largely standardized,’” he says primly to her. “I have been upgraded,” he informs the slaver helpfully.
“Put me down, you fucking rusty bitch,” the slaver wheezes.
“The captain will not be pleased that you have damaged yourself again,” Kay says, ignoring this.
“The captain,” Jyn replies a little testily as she awkwardly winds the scarf around her forearm, trying to keep the end from dragging in the mud, “will get over it.”
“He will be upset that the meeting turned out to be a trap,” Kay continues over the slaver’s increasingly frantic pants and pained cries. “My initial analysis placed that probability at thirty-two percent.” Jyn glances at him over her arm. His voicebox does not falter, but it definitely drops slightly in volume, which she is learning to interpret as…embarrassment, she thinks. Maybe nervousness? Concern, she decides, eyeing the slightly agitated way that his optics keep narrowing and refocusing on the thug as if he is examining a particularly foul piece of organic waste, or a bad line of code.
“So you were right,” Jyn shrugs as well as she can without moving her bad arm or dropping the scarf. “Traps happen.”
“He will say that he should have been there instead,” Kay says a touch morosely.
Jyn rolls her eyes and bites down on her scarf end, using her teeth to tug her makeshift brace tight. “Better me than him,” she mutters through the material. And that’s not bloody minded protectiveness or anything, either – that fight had come down to a lot of hand-to-hand and while Cassian was no slouch, he wasn’t…well, he wasn’t her.
“You are better conditioned and trained to handle violent confrontation,” Kay agrees. “She is forty-five percent more efficient at combat than the captain,” he tells the slaver, who does not seem particularly impressed.
“Fifty, minimum,” Jyn corrects, securing her broken blade hilt in her belt and stepping close enough to pluck the slaver’s spare ammo clip from his belt. “Blaster?”
Kay’s eyes go blue again for a moment. “Right boot.”
Jyn fishes the blaster from the slaver’s kicking boot and tucks it into her shirt, reloading her own and tucking it back into her holster.
Kay regards the slaver for a moment longer, then turns, hefts the big man by his underarms, and with a faint whine of his servos, sends the Human flying over the wall. Jyn cocks an eyebrow and listens to the shriek, the thud, then the short silence. Kay’s eyes flash bright white for a moment, and then he turns to her and says “I am twenty-four percent more efficient at physical violence than you.”
The tension goes out of her shoulders. If the slaver was showing any life signs, Kay’s short-range sensors would have picked them up. “Only against a single opponent,” she replies, turning and walking as casually as she can out of the alley, tucking her broken arm into her jacket and trying to look like just another local going about her business. It isn’t easy to pull off, not with the giant black droid clumping along behind her. But this is an Imperial town so an old Imp droid isn’t too remarkable a sight. And anyway, Jyn reflects as she tucks her arm in close and walks a little bit closer to his looming shadow - he’s well worth any trouble he might bring down on her.
Jyn skids around the corner, her filthy boots slipping in the ankle deep mud that covers this part of the planet, and finds herself three steps from a dead end. Behind her, the heavy, squishy footsteps of her pursuer pound loudly through the muck – only seconds away from rounding that same corner and finding her gasping for air with nothing but an empty blaster, a broken vibroblade, and what’s probably a busted right arm.
Not her best day.
She slams hard against the wall as if it might magically open up to reveal a hidden passageway. No such luck. There is a door tucked against the far left wall, but it’s made of solid metal and has at least two locks that she can see at a glance. No time to pick it, no time to –
“Hells, you’re a fast one,” the asshole who plans to sell her to the Empire pants as he appears at the opening to the alley. Jyn eyes him – almost two meters tall, at least one hundred kilos, wearing metal and leather-worked armor over his vital bits, shit, he’s even got a kriffing helmet and gorget. If she’s quick (and she does not feel quick right now, not with pain lancing down through her right side and blood oozing into her left eye and…damn it, her left bootheel has come loose, she knew she should have taken up Cassian’s offer to get new ones, damn the boot, damn her arm, damn this jackass) – if she’s quick, she might get her broken blade into his eye. She might at least break his crooked, filthy nose.
She shifts her weight, ready to spring as he stomps through the mud towards her. He sees it, and grins. His teeth are shockingly white and clean and straight, wildly contrasting with his worn and muddy clothes, his worn and even more muddy face. “No good, sweetheart,” he says in a light tone. He sounds almost kindly, like a grown up speaking to a frustrated child. “Won’t do you, no use trying. You’re hurt, and worse,” he stops a few steps out of reach and makes a show of looking her over, taking in her slumped shoulders and her heaving chest, the sweat on her skin and the pale cast of her face, “you’re exhausted.”
He lunges forward, and Jyn gets her good arm up but he’s coming too fast and she is hurt and she is exhausted and oh fuck here it comes close your teeth together and breathe out –
A shriek of twisting metal, a startled shout, a sharp snap, and then…Jyn opens her eyes.
“The typical organic decreases in efficiency by seventeen percent for every hour of physical fatigue beyond standard operating levels,” a crisp electronic voice says from somewhere far above Jyn’s head. The jackass trying to sell her is whimpering and clawing at his arm, and also appears to be…hovering in the air? Ah, no. Jyn tilts her head back and despite herself, smiles up at the tower of scratched black metal and faded silver paint.
“Frustratingly, all organic beings have individual and highly non-standardized operating levels,” K2SO continues, his glowing yellow optics focused on the pale and sweating face of the thug, oblivious to the way the man writhes in his grip, the arm in Kay’s grip clearly broken. “And they do not come with operating manuals,” Kay adds, his voicebox shifting into a distinct tone of disapproval that Jyn knows all too well.
“Neither do you,” she murmurs with a smile that warps into a grimace, leaning back against the wall and running her good hand carefully up her right arm, feeling for the – shite, yeah, there it is, definitely a break…right…there.
Kay’s head twists away from the dangling thug to look at her for a moment, his optics telescoping on her and flickering to blue for a moment, which she’s learned means he’s giving her a brief CT scan. “My hardware is largely standardized and my specifications easily researched. There is a linear fracture in your right ulna.”
“Makes it easier to hack you,” Jyn points out, rolling up her muddy sleeve and fumbling her scarf off her neck. It isn’t much, but she can wrap it tight enough around her forearm to stabilize the fracture until she gets some bone stabilizers from the medkit in their ship. It will make some ugly bruises on her arm and hurt like a bitch for a few days, but should heal up fine.
The thug (or rather, slaver, Jyn decides – the Empire wouldn’t have kept Jyn alive long enough to be a laborer, but as far as the thug was concerned, she was meat to be sold) hisses a string of invectives and tries to twist out of Kay’s grip. The move only makes his arm bend even further into an improbable shape, and he whimpers, fat tears streaming down his dirty face and leaving trails in the grime. Kay turns his head back to regard the slaver impassively. “That is why I specified ‘largely standardized,’” he says primly to her. “I have been upgraded,” he informs the slaver helpfully.
“Put me down, you fucking rusty bitch,” the slaver wheezes.
“The captain will not be pleased that you have damaged yourself again,” Kay says, ignoring this.
“The captain,” Jyn replies a little testily as she awkwardly winds the scarf around her forearm, trying to keep the end from dragging in the mud, “will get over it.”
“He will be upset that the meeting turned out to be a trap,” Kay continues over the slaver’s increasingly frantic pants and pained cries. “My initial analysis placed that probability at thirty-two percent.” Jyn glances at him over her arm. His voicebox does not falter, but it definitely drops slightly in volume, which she is learning to interpret as…embarrassment, she thinks. Maybe nervousness? Concern, she decides, eyeing the slightly agitated way that his optics keep narrowing and refocusing on the thug as if he is examining a particularly foul piece of organic waste, or a bad line of code.
“So you were right,” Jyn shrugs as well as she can without moving her bad arm or dropping the scarf. “Traps happen.”
“He will say that he should have been there instead,” Kay says a touch morosely.
Jyn rolls her eyes and bites down on her scarf end, using her teeth to tug her makeshift brace tight. “Better me than him,” she mutters through the material. And that’s not bloody minded protectiveness or anything, either – that fight had come down to a lot of hand-to-hand and while Cassian was no slouch, he wasn’t…well, he wasn’t her.
“You are better conditioned and trained to handle violent confrontation,” Kay agrees. “She is forty-five percent more efficient at combat than the captain,” he tells the slaver, who does not seem particularly impressed.
“Fifty, minimum,” Jyn corrects, securing her broken blade hilt in her belt and stepping close enough to pluck the slaver’s spare ammo clip from his belt. “Blaster?”
Kay’s eyes go blue again for a moment. “Right boot.”
Jyn fishes the blaster from the slaver’s kicking boot and tucks it into her shirt, reloading her own and tucking it back into her holster.
Kay regards the slaver for a moment longer, then turns, hefts the big man by his underarms, and with a faint whine of his servos, sends the Human flying over the wall. Jyn cocks an eyebrow and listens to the shriek, the thud, then the short silence. Kay’s eyes flash bright white for a moment, and then he turns to her and says “I am twenty-four percent more efficient at physical violence than you.”
The tension goes out of her shoulders. If the slaver was showing any life signs, Kay’s short-range sensors would have picked them up. “Only against a single opponent,” she replies, turning and walking as casually as she can out of the alley, tucking her broken arm into her jacket and trying to look like just another local going about her business. It isn’t easy to pull off, not with the giant black droid clumping along behind her. But this is an Imperial town so an old Imp droid isn’t too remarkable a sight. And anyway, Jyn reflects as she tucks her arm in close and walks a little bit closer to his looming shadow - he’s well worth any trouble he might bring down on her.
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Omg Kaytoo is the best
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