Open Ajan Kloss Unscheduled Maintenance

[Brienna Lanaamer]

“Well, what’s wrong with it?” Bri stood, hands on her hips, staring up at the large starship in front of her. A small droid rolled up to her side and offered a lengthy series of beeps and chirps as way of response. The Jedi interrupted the droid before it could finish, sounding slightly exasperated, “wait, wait, wait, we both know you’re smarter than me,” the droid had no apparent facial features, save for a few flashing lights, but it was obviously pleased by its human partner’s comment. “So leave out the technical stuff,” the Jedi continued. NL-142 replied with a few more beeps, at a slower pace and lower tone. Brienna narrowed her eyes and wondered if the droid was mocking her. She shifted her position from looking at the ship to looking at the droid. “Oh,” came a rather depressed sounding solitary word reply.

The ship in question was Brienna’s 3-Z light freighter. On reentry into Ajan Kloss, she had noticed a particularly annoying sound coming from the ship’s engine room. The Jedi had hoped it was nothing, or something minor, but unfortunately NL seemed to think major repairs were required to the compressor or capacitor, lest they both wish to end up floating aimlessly in the dark cold of space. Thinking back to a recent mission, Bri pondered that attempting to fly repeatedly through dense gas planets may not have been the best idea. Shaking the thought from her head, she looked down and asked, “Can you fix it?” NL replied with what could be described as the droidspeak equivalent of a scoff, lamenting it’s own lack of dextrous arms and hands.

It was a cooler day on Ajan Kloss, but Bri felt the general humidity of the forest on a sunny day slowly start to affect her. Ships were parked in the caves that doubled as hangers, but, they had all been full on Bri’s arrival, forcing her to land in one of the more flat, open areas near the Jedi temple. “Well, you’ll have to walk me through it then,” the Jedi replied to the droid, which seemed amenable to the suggestion with a nod of its ‘head.’ Bri folded her arms over her chest and let out an outward sigh, displeased with the day’s detour that had been placed in front of her.

OOC: Open to anyone who would make sense on Ajan Kloss

 

[Ruulo Vos]

Ruulo had a slight sheen of sweat on his brow as he made his way back toward the temple in a light jog. The Kiffar had decided to take advantage of the pleasant weather and had gone out for trip through one of the outdoor obstacles courses. He was finishing up with a jog back to the temple proper having left through the hangars. It'd been a minute since he'd put himself through the courses and they always managed to get his blood pumping.

As he jogged something caught his eye. What he assumed was another member of the order, based on her robes, was having a bit of an argument with her astromech. He couldn't catch what was being said, but the sight had piqued his curiosity. He angled his jog to head in their direction and slowed to brisk walk as he got closer. "Hey there! Sorry if I'm butting in but I couldn't help but notice you over here having it with your droid here." He offered a warm smile as he continued. "Is there trouble with your ship." Ruulo let out a long whistle as he took a critical eye to her ship. "Beauty that it is, wow. 3-Z from Nova Drives right? I always preferred the older Y-T models but Nova did a great job with this series."

He started to walk around, appreciating the girls ship before he suddenly stopped. Ruulo had an issue with getting distracted, especially when it came to starships. "Sorry I'm probably rambling. Kind of a bad habit, names Ruulo by the way." He offered her a handshake and a friendly smile in greeting, and hoped she didn't find him to be intruding.

@ModernMarvel

 

[Brienna Lanaamer]

Bri turned her head and torso as she heard the footsteps of a brisk walk approaching. The lush green grass provided a soft sound, but every so often a twig snapped or dry leaf was stepped on which signaled the arrival of a visitor. NL had rolled away, probably to continue its diagnostics, leaving Bri alone with the new visitor.

The footsteps belonged to a Kiffar, who, Bri had thought she had seen around the temple, but had yet to have had a formal introduction. She offered a slight laugh and smile at his mentioning of the recently terminated discussion with NL-142. “He can get a little frustrated by my lack of technical knowledge,” Bri offered as way of explanation. After a momentary pause she added, “though, to be fair I end up getting frustrated by his insistence on explaining things in a way I don’t understand,” sharing the blame with her droid companion.

Bri nodded in confirmation of the Kiffar’s description of her ship. It even appeared he knew more about it than she did, though, that wasn’t exactly a stretch, given her limited understanding of starships. “That’s right,” she replied, “and yes I am. When I was on approach here, the engined started to make a rather annoying sound. NL here says it’s something wrong with the compressor,” she paused, raised an eyebrow and looked Slightly confused at her ship, “or capacitor?”

At this point NL had noticed its human partner engaged in conversation with a fellow Jedi and ceased its own checks, rolling over. It caught the final snippet of Bri’s sentence, and offered a quick interjection of beeps and chirps that the it was indeed the capacitor causing the issue. The Jedi offered a knowing glance to the Kiffar, illustrating the droids superior starship knowledge. “I’m Brienna,” she replied with a friendly smile, taking Ruulo’s hand. “Bri,” came an additional reply, indicating her preferred nickname.

It was obvious that Ruulo was knowledgeable about starships, leading to the development of an idea in Bri’s mind. She did not want to distract or sidetrack him from his own activities, but knew that the task of fixing the ending would progress a lot quicker with an extra set of hands. She offered a testing question, “So you know a fair amount about starships?” with a curious glance. NL was eagerly looking up at Bri, eager to get started on the repair work. She looked down at the droid and then back to Ruulo, “If It’s not too much troubl, do you mind giving me a hand?”

@Okoju

 

[Ruulo Vos]

Ruulo gave a light chuckle once the droid interjected indicating it was probably the capacitor. "I'd be happy to help out, didn't have much going on today anyway." He walked knelt down and looked at the NL unit. "So you're pretty sure it's the capacitor yeah?" He looked back to Bri as he stood up. "Don't take this as a lecture by any means but he means the coolant capacitor. They tend to be a bit skeevy on these 3-Z models."

He ducked down and made his way under the ship to where NL had been scanning. He felt around for a bit, it was sometimes hard to find the covers on ships, since every one was built slightly differently. He finally found the right component cover and he pried it off and instantly a shower of ash and soot fell almost in his face. "Ah...yup that's definitely the problem." He reached inside the compartment and started trying to work the part out of it's casing.

"Looks like your little pal here was....come on now...spot........on! Got it!" The Kiffar almost fell backward as he finally managed to pull the capacitor out. He came out and held up the part for Bri to see. It looked like a pretty simple cylinder but it was charred completely black and covered in ash. "What the hell were you doing? This thing looks like it was close to disintegrating." He gave a light chuckle to let her know he was just pulling her chain a bit.

@ModernMarvel

 

[Brienna Lanaamer]

NL nodded vigorously when asked if it believed that the capacitor was the problem. The droid proceeded to launch into a lengthy and rather animated assessment of Bri’s flying skills, or lack therof. The Jedi cut the droid off before it could get too far. “Ok, ok, I think he gets it NL,” she replied, sounding slightly annoyed by the droids eagerness to turn on her. Bri knew nothing about the skeevy nature of the coolant capacitor on 3-Z model freighters, so nodded in deferment to Ruulo’s explanation.

Bri followed her droid and the Kiffar around the ship until they reach the engine access panel. Ruulo took it off easier than she had ever done in her years of owning the ship and proceeded to stick his hand in, fishing for the part in question. After a few moments, Ruulo emerged with a cylindrical piece of technology, that was obviously charred, burnt, and well beyond repair. Bri almost laughed at the sight of it, but suppressed the urge in fear of what NL might say to her later.

If a droid without any facial features could scowl at someone, NL was doing it to Bri, as Ruulo asked what had caused the coolant capacitor to disintegrate to such a state. Feeling slightly embarrassed, Bri respondent with a short, somewhat nervous sounding laugh. “Ah, well like NL mentioned, I’m not exactly the best flyer and on a few recent excursions to evade some pirates, I may have taken a short cut or two through,” she paused, finding the right words, “some less than adequate flying conditions.” NL offered a beep in reply to indicate that Bri was drastically understating the precipitating situations. The Jedi replied with a slight frown back at the droid.

Trying to move the subject on from her flying faults, Bri turned back to Ruulo with a question, “so, what does a repair for this look like? I’m guessing I need a few new parts?”

@Okoju

 

[Ruulo Vos]

Ruulo laughed as Bri explained how her capacitor had found it's way to it's current state. "Well I wouldn't sweat it, gotta do what ya gotta with pirates sometimes." Ruulo thought back to his recently fixed control module on his own ship. The result of some reckless flying of his own.

He perked up as she asked what the repair would entail. "Well shouldn't be too bad, really just need to replace the capacitor and," He couldn't resist a chuckle as he looked back to ash in the capacitor housing, "clean the kriffing hell out this housing." He knelt down and looked NL in his photo receptor, "Mind taking care of that while me and Bri swing by the hangers and see if they have any spare capacitors?" He waited of course for the droids snarky comeback in the form of several agitated beeps and squels, some that he wouldn't use around proper company. "Look bud I know but I really think you're the only one who can handle it," Ruulo gave a friendly wink back to bri and held up his hands. "See I've got these big, clumsy human hands, I know you can get that house spotless with your superior droid intellect and tools."

He stood and turned back to Bri. "Like I said, I think I remember having a few spare capacitors lying around the hangers that should work. Wanna go check it out?"

@ModernMarvel

 

[Brienna Lanaamer]

In her retelling of the events escaping from the Pirates, Bri decided to leave out that her escape was more down to sheer luck from poor decision making, rather than an ingenious idea with potentially harmful side effects. Bri laughed to herself inwardly, knowing that NL was most likely itching to spill the proverbial beans on its partners poor flying skills and decisions. Instead, the Jedi replied with a simple, “Yeah, I suppose you do.”

NL-142 looked up at Ruulo as it was addressed to begin work on the capacitor housing. Bri could tell that her Jedi colleague was trying to flatter the droid in hopes of enlisting it’s assistance. Luckily, NL’s ego was often prone to inflation, and while Bri was momentarily concerned that the droid might think it was being patronized, agreed to the work with a few beeps. Bri made sure to thank NL as it rolled off to complete its job, to which it responded with a nod of its head.

As much as the droid and its human partner argued and lobbed snarky comments at each other, Bri knew that she would be lost (sometimes literally) without its assistance. Likewise, NL respected and owed a deal of gratitude to Bri for saving it from a life of menial labor, and treating their relationship as a partnership, rather than an ownership. At the end of the day, the two did maintain a deep affection for the other, even if such affection was shown in unconventional methods.

“Let’s go,” Bri replied with a nod and a smile at Ruulo’s offer to help search the hanger for a spare capacitor that would fit with her ship. After a few moments of walking in silence, Bri’s curiosity of people got the better of her and asked, “So, how long have you been with the Order?”

@Okoju