| abstract | - It wasn't long that the Ghosts had just gotten back from an outsector patrol that turned into a violent pirate attack on the Marauder Corvette "Audacity". Only a few hours to be exact. However the sun had set on their side of Ord Mantell and the base had fallen into the sleepy routines of night time. Occasional work could be heard across the quiet base as the guards did their patrols and the occasionally hydrospanner could be heard from the flight deck. In one of his usual hiding spots, Raxis L'ygr could be found in a hangar used to house both droid and stargfighter repair equipment. Having made good time as a backup mechanic, it wasn't that uncommon for Raxis to take extra shifts to help his technicians out. Here however, he was afterhours. Sitting on a small chair on rollers, Raxis spins a smashball with his feet up on a crate while Vee-Ten quietly beeps as the droid is plugged into a power recharge machine. A datapad on his lap, Raxis is quietly reading the planetary news. Yawning to himself, he scratches his bare arm. Off duty, he's wearing his customary green tank top and combat fatigue pants, with finely polished black jump boots. Quietly tapping with a laser-pen on the datapad, he sits in the hangar alone. Rebecca walks in guiding a tow droid as it hauls an X-Wing into the repair hangar. The droid stops and whizzes off once the ship is in position and Rebecca maneuvers a ladder up next to the fuselage. Reaching the top she hits the catch and the canopy hisses open. She climbs down the ladder and searches around for a hydrospanner and other tools. Lifting his head from the dimly lit section of the hangar, Raxis doesn't hesitate to look up to see none other than Rebecca Varn, working on one of the squadron's X-wings. Tapping his laser pen on his datapad, he brings up her schedule to give a silent 'hrmm' to himself as he finds that she was scheduled to moonlight maintenance on the machine. Returning the datapad's screen to the news, he watches her for a moment before turning one eye back to the news. Rebecca strolls by muttering to herself in Corellian and the tone isn't very nice then she turns and notices the Lieutenant lounging by his astromech. "Oh...hey Lieutenant, didn't think anyone would be here except the grease monkeys." Her eyes scan the are as though she's looking for something. With one hand, he motions to the large toolchest ten feet away from them, darkly colored in the dimly lit hangar, he feels the immediate need to be helpful as he turns off his datapad. "Naw, they're all asleep. I take on some shifts here every once in a while, get into the guts of the ships, help out where I can." He replies, arching his back a little to relax it. "I come here to hide." Looks to the Lieutenant with a wry grin at his words. She then moves over to the toolchest and starts to rifle through the drawers. She looks back over her shoulder, still wearing the wry grin. "Not a very good hiding spot if I found you." She giggles a little bit. She stands up holding a hydrospanner and a few other smaller tools. "I need to fix the communication radio in Ghost 9, it seems to want to slide onto other frequencies." She starts to step back towards her fighter. "Like the telling joke channel during a space engagement?" Raxis replies with a grin, unable to help himself. "Yeah...I think it kept slipping over to encoded Ghost Squadron frequency while you were on that one, Varn." She steps up to the Lieutenant and pokes him in the chest with the hydrospanner hard enough to make him feel it. "I had switched over to Third Flights frequency when I made that comment about Vader training the troops to not be able to shoot straight. It's not /my/ fault that the selector switched back to the Squad frequency at an inopportune time." She pokes him with the hydrospanner once more a bit harder this time as her eyes start to turn a darker gray, like a storm building up behind them, as her temper increases. "That's why I'm here, to make sure it gets fixed properly." She hisses the last word knowing if the techs and grease monkey's heard her diss their workmanship they might ban her from the repair hangar and who knows what would happen to her ship then. Chuckling, Raxis shakes his head and shrugs off the urge to rub the sore circular spot on his chest that still bore the impression of the tail end of a hydrospanner. Waving his hands to the side in emphasis, smashball in one hand, he denies total involvement. "Hey it's not like you got in trouble for it. We've had some bumps and scratches on the X-wings but if we have to check the radio then we have to. Last thing you want is to say something on local frequency that's supposed to only be heard by your squadron." He responds, folding his arms over the sore spot on his chest so that he can rub it inconspicuously. "Unless you want me to mention the chatter to the Captain...I mean...I could." He adds playfully, taking a moment to pick up a LCD readout on Vee-Ten's recharge status. "That's why I'm here, to make sure it doesn't happen again." Her face flushed now and she walks off toward her fighter and stomps up the ladder and smacks her head against the of the canopy and swears in Corellian loudly, drawing some chuckles from passing crewmen. She bends over the edge into the cockpit and starts to work on the radio. With her back turned, Raxis makes a slight scowl and rubs the sore spot on his chest for a moment before leaning over in his chair to pick up a thermos and pour himself a cup of tapcaf. Looking back up again, he blinks a few times at her posture. Taking a moment to observe, he averts his eyes and sips his drink quietly. "You okay?" He blurts out curiously, as he idly begins to inspect the blunted Nexu tooth hanging around his neck. Rebecca sticks her head up and once more hits her head against the canopy and swears again. "Yeah, I will be..." She replies back loud enough to make herself heard over a sudden noise erupts in the hangar. She glances over and noticed a tech carrying a tray overly laden with parts had tripped over a refueling line and hadn't payed attention to where he was stepping. He got to his feet and angrily glares about the hangar. "Who put this refueling line here!? He half shouts glancing at each tech and they turn away in turn, clearly trying to hide grins and not burst out laughing. "When I find out who did that, they're gonna be scrubbing every garbage scow that comes to this planet for the next year!" He turns and storms off through a door. The sight brings a wry smile to Rebecca's face though she desperately tries to maintain her anger at the Lieutenant. Grinning to himself, unwilling to give a telling glance that would better explain to the female pilot why the man tripped over the fueling line to begin with, Raxis looks up again and watches the pilot work on the radio. "Are you sure? maybe we'd all be safer if I got one of the guys to remove the canopy first." She glares at the Lieutenant once more and her scowl returns, but she sighs and climbs into the cockpit and returns to the work at hand, but after a few moments she stops and leans back in the accelerator couch and wraps an arm over head and closes her eyes. It's difficult to see what exactly is going on but it appears that she has given up and the radio for the time being. Setting his coffee down, Raxis rolls up out of the chair and makes his way across the hangar towards the X-wing. Sliding his arm up to his shoulder, he rolls it in its socket a little bit and promptly climbs up the ladder. Deftly dodging the dreaded canopy, he sticks his head over the lip of the cockpit and looks to her. "Tools." He says bluntly, sticking his hand out as he looks to the navcomms casing. Without removing her arm from her face. "I got it, sir." Spelling the word with a C and U. "I just need to calm down and focus. I'll be fine in a few minutes." She raises her arm slightly and peeks at the Lieutenant from under her arm. "You sure?" Raxis replies, turning to look at her. "I'm not over here asking because I don't think you can do it. I'm asking because I'm looking to help." She removes her arm a little more and looks more squarely at him. Her eyes blink a few times from the light filtering through the canopy. "Yes, I'm sure. I've been working with mechanical things for most of my life. I've always been curious as to how things work and I take 'em apart to find out, then put 'em back together." She takes a deep breath. "Normally I could do this in my sleep....." She leaves the sentence hanging. Tilting his head a little, Raxis folds his arms on the side of the cockpit and watches her for a moment. "Well..." He begins, taking a moment to tuck his necklace and dog tags back under his tank top. "...then what's the problem?" She ponders for a bit then says "Nothing." She leans up and picks up the tools and starts to take apart the panel housing the radio, hunched awkwardly around the flight stick. "Interesting necklace..." She says casually. Flattening his lips a little, Raxis rests on the ladder with a hand on one of the bars to give her some room with a thoughtful look on his face. "Oh that..." He ponders, shrugging to the side to lean against the body of the X-wing. "...yeah a little bit of history there. My first real time out with the Ghosts we were chasing a freighter that dumped its cargo to evade us." He scoffs, taking out the necklace again to rub it. "I almost hit the damn container. Well long story short it had a bunch of lethal beasts in it. A couple of nexu and a wicked spider-like thing. Well...they asked for volunteers to hunt the Nexu that disappeared into the air shafts of the Reprisal..." She giggles a bit as she guesses the conclusion. She pulls the panel away and takes apart the selector assembly. She inspects each piece as she removes it and places it in specific spots around her. "So..go on, finish the tale, as long as it doesn't end with you buck naked in the mess hall trying to track down one of those critters." She giggles a bit... Blushing a little at the reference, Raxis coughs. "Uh...no..." He replies, shrugging again and clearing his throat before continuing the story. "So I sign up, right? I show up for the hunt with Vee-Ten and my sidearm. I'm literally surrounded by two squads of marines looking at me like I'm some kind of security consultant." He gets a wry grin on his face and continues. "Then they tell me no blasters to avoid damaging the ship's guts. So they give me a weak but supposedly effective shotgun and send me in. Not five minutes into the hunt, the male jumps us and starts tearing into all of us. It must have known I was a pilot because it saved the Twi'lek and I for last." He chuckles, lifting his arm to point towards his shoulder. "I get raked. Bad. However, somewhere in the process, this Twi'lek marine and I are going crazy with these shotguns, turning the ducts into cheese with miss after miss." He adds, stopping for a moment for dramatic effect. "But...I showed those grunt pukes. Right when the thing was about to eat both of us I got one hell of a shot in and dropped it." She giggles a bit harder. "The big bad pilot takes down the mean monster and saves the day." She calms considerably when she spots the problem "Ah..Hah!" She looks up at the Lieutenant for the first time in awhile. "Um...would you mind and grab me another one of these." She holds the piece in the flat of her hand. "Sure thing..." Raxis says, sliding down the ladder to land on the concrete floor with a thud. Walking to a crate, he taps a code on the lock and it opens to reveal a tray of navcomm pieces and picks out the right one. "Yeah...well I think they cooked it and ate it but they saved me a piece." He speaks up, closing the crate and moving back to the ladder. With a few steps he's back at the top. "That is, after I got out of the bacta tank." "Sure thing..." Raxis says, sliding down the ladder to land on the concrete floor with a thud. Walking to a crate, he taps a code on the lock and it opens to reveal a tray of navcomm pieces and picks out the right one. "Yeah...well I think they cooked it and ate it but they saved me a piece." He speaks up, closing the crate and moving back to the ladder. With a few steps he's back at the top. "That is, after I got out of the bacta tank." He offers her the piece. "Here you go." She holds her hand out without looking up. "Thanks, this thing is a total mess..." She replaces the part and starts to put back everything. "So how long were you layed up? With such a vicious wound." her tone slightly mocking as she screws another piece in place. "A few days in the tank," Raxis replies, "Hey...those cuts were inches deep. Clawed all over really. Nearly missed my throat." He adds, watching her work. She finally gets the last piece back into place and flips a few switches and everything lights up like it should. "Shame." She says just a hint of a smile tinges her voice as she hooks up a headset and places it over her head. "Ghost 9 to Control. Ghost 9 to Control. Request radio test on squadron frequencies, over." She pauses apparently listening to someone in the tower on the other end. "Copy Control, Five by Five on this frequency..." She pauses once more. "Copy Control changing Flight 1 Frequency." She fiddles with the controls and settles it on the right frequency. "Copy Control, Five by five here too. Copy." She continues to check the frequencies and after a few moments she unplugs the headset and stows it in it's proper place. "Bah..." Raxis blurts, sliding down the ladder again to begin to move back towards his coffee. "Shame? Man that's the last time I walk ten feet to get you a radio piece." He says with an undertone of teasing to his voice. "Man you hear that Vee?" He says to his droid, still powered off for recharching. "Shame it missed my neck. Hey Varn? Who's going to be around to tell you to watch out for the..." Rebecca sneaks out of the cockpit after you turn around and stands right behind you. "I was joking, I'm glad your around, otherwise I might've gotten a true a**hole to train with." She checks her chronometer. "I'd love to stay and chat, but I need to shower and hit the sack. No doubt it's gonna be an early day tomorrow." Turning to face her, Raxis can't help but smile a bit warmer at her compliment as he stands square to her and regards her. "Well...thank you." He replies, genuinely flattered. "For the moment there I was beginning to think you were grueling the entire experience." He pauses, lips curling into a devilish grin. "Now I'm really going to feel bad when I wake you up at 0400 for double PT followed by ten hours in the simms." he smiles wide showing her glittering white teeth. "Bring it on, oh mighty slayer of wicked beasts." She bows mockingly. "You'll find me bright eyed and bushy tailed no matter when I wake up." With that she turns on her heel and walks out of the hangar. Raising his cup to her as she walks off, he stands there in the hangar and watches her leave. "Good night, Varn." He calls out loud enough to only be heard in the hangar. With a yawn, Raxis turns back towards his equipment and sighs. "Man you take forever to eat, Vee...you're killin me here."
|
