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The ship does land in one piece. As she'd suspected from the moment she saw it, the stolen ship is a rare Imperial shuttle made for stealth. She leans easily into these controls, quietly whipping through space, even after it became apparent that the patrolling TIEs had been ordered to find the ship's escaped prisoners. Hera had dodged among them, evading their scopes and radars, as she flew the shuttle far out enough to make the jump to hyperspace. In the end, it was only one unfortunate fighter that managed to catch sight of her.

The shuttle's weapons systems are nothing special, she learned. But they did the job.

The jump to Batuu was only about three hours, even with the slightly roundabout route Hera decided to take. The girls, fortunately, seem to be accustomed to space travel. Occasionally they whisper to each other, but otherwise, they tend to stay quiet unless Hera speaks to them. About an hour in, Hera recommends that they get some sleep, and the girls don't object.

It's midafternoon at Black Spire when they reach the planet. Hera is careful on her approach, avoiding likely lanes of traffic – she doesn't want to run into questions about the stolen shuttle she's flying. But then, most who visit Batuu aren't the type to ask questions. But she still chooses to land the shuttle in a clearing, surrounded by dense forest, about five kliks downriver of the outpost.

As the shuttle touches down, she turns to the girls. "Are you all right?"

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Sucasa keeps staring back at the animals for a long moment, but then turns back to her companions and shakes her head a very tiny bit.

"No. If we can't help them . . . I don't want to."

She sniffles again.

"I'm sorry."

She hesitates, then leads the girls to the side of the street, a little way past the animal stall.

Hera then glances away to be sure they're out of the way, then lowers herself closer to the ground, to meet Sucasa's eyes.

"There's nothing wrong with wanting others to be free," she tells her.

"It makes people mad," Sucasa says simply, still holding on to Hera's hand tightly.

Beside her, Wrema's head lifts and she looks around them.

Like before, she can tell someone is watching them. But who? And where? Maybe she'll focus on that while Hera talks to Sucasa, so that no one starts crying any time soon.

(That would probably only draw more attention.)

"It's okay to make people mad."

Hera sighs. "But sometimes it's dangerous. And I can't put you two in danger."

"I don't think you did that," Wrema says, tugging lightly at Hera's elbow. "Someone's here."

Sucasa sniffs again, backing into Hera just in case.

"It's not one of the animals."

You know, in case anyone worried about that.

Edited 2019-04-27 00:43 (UTC)

Hera glances to Wrema, then slowly rises back to her feet.

"Is it..." she's not sure how to ask this.

"... someone familiar?"

Wrema's brow wrinkles, and she bites her lip.

"I don't . . . not really?"

She doesn't sound too certain of that.

"Let's keep moving then."

That someone's watching them, someone Wrema can't identify, makes Hera want to stay among the crowds, rather than risk being caught mostly alone in some back corner. Not that she'd really expect help from the passersby here, but crowds still made things harder for anyone who might be targeting them.

They follow the the street into the main road. Past the major spaceport, from which a freighter shoots into the sky above them, past a shack to their right advertising different kinds of milk from creatures around the galaxy. Hera glances among the stalls and shops, trying to decide if it might be worth ducking into one of them.

Sucasa and Wrema quietly fall in line with her, peering furtively at the buildings (and people) that they pass. But this time it's Wrema that tugs on their hands gently, attention caught by one mostly-open-air stall that is full to the brim with toys of every shape and size. There's a model dreadnought hanging from the ceiling, only partially obscured from her view by a silk hanging that probably indicates the shop is closed when it's fully descended.

(Not that Wrema knows it's a dreadnought, but anyone can recognize a capital ship when they see one. Even a little Chiss girl.)

Sucasa drifts to a stop a moment later, mouth opening faintly. There are so many toys. Big ones, small ones, dolls and little wooden carvings, tops and plush animals, ship models and little baubles and an assortment of what are obviously not real droids, but they seem very cuddle-able.

Both of them are momentarily entranced.

Hera, meanwhile, is too busy watching over the area to notice what has caught the girls' attention. But she feels them stop next to her, and glances down, and then up to the stall that they're gazing at.

All right. It tugs at her heart. She half wants to dump out the credits they have and load the girls with plush Wookiees, model ships, toy droids, and dolls of knights and princesses from half a dozen worlds, before returning them back to the Chiss.

For the moment, she settles on saying, "Go on, go look around."

The girls would be well aware they couldn't possibly carry all of that, especially not onboard a starship, but --

Her permission is too much to resist.

Wrema heads straight for the model ships, picking up and putting down several boxes with increasingly complicated construction. Sucasa takes a more winding path, passing dolls and blocks and towers before staring in rapt awe at all of the stuffed animals taking up the entire right-hand side of the stall.

There are so many, and they all look so huggable. She doesn't even know where to start.

Hera lets the girls explore the stall themselves, as she wanders toward a shelf of soft, sewn dolls. There are various species, humans and Ithorians and Mon Calamari, some whom she guessed were from myths and fairy tales, a few she was sure she recognized as real people, a popular podracer, a famous Queen.

She stills at a shelf filled with dolls wearing Jedi robes. It is slightly tucked away, but even still, Hera is stunned that the stall's owner would dare to sell these, even this far from the Empire. Hera takes a step closer, examining the dolls, their small toy lightsabers, alternating blue and green.

And her focus catches on a Kajain'sa'Nikto Jedi, a blue blade beside him.

Edited 2019-04-28 03:05 (UTC)

"What's that?" Wrema asks quietly, having come to stand by Hera after losing interest in the model ships. All of these dolls are references to things that she doesn't understand -- none of them are Chiss, after all -- but they're all so interesting-looking, the kind of people she'd like to meet someday.

The kind of people she'd like to understand.

Meanwhile, Sucasa has started picking up and hugging one of each kind of soft toy, beginning with a gangling Kowakian monkey lizard (not that she knows that's what it is). Next up is a wampa, and after that some kind of giant cat with six legs and tusks. It's very purple.

Edited 2019-04-28 18:23 (UTC)

Hera doesn't notice Wrema until she speaks. She glances to her, and then quickly around for Sucasa.

And then hopes the shop's proprietor doesn't mind what Sucasa is doing, because she's certainly not going to stop her.

She looks back to the shelf. "These were, um - people, sort of like warriors, who used to exist where I'm from in the galaxy."

Wrema frowns, reaching out to take down another one of the dolls -- this one of a blue lady with head-tails a lot like Hera's.

"How can you be sort of a warrior? You are, or you aren't."

That's what she's always been told, anyway.

Behind them, Sucasa is viciously cuddling something large and tentacled. Or she is pretending the tentacled of the thing are a beard. Possibly both.

Hera looks to the doll in Wrema's hands, and needs a moment to catch her breath. She takes that moment to do another glance around - but the passersby don't seem interested in them, or the shop, and no one looks close enough to hear them.

She crouches down again, to be level with Wrema, her eyes now back on the doll. "They fought sometimes, to protect others. But they also did many other things. They could be healers, and teachers. Mostly, they were meant to help others."

Wrema looks up at Hera, pulling the blue doll close to her chest for a second.

"Like you?"

That's what Hera seems like from her point of view, anyway. It's . . . it's understandable, mostly, if she thinks about it like that.

Her eyes flicker up to Wrema, and it takes her a moment to answer that.

"Well -" she says, softly, keeping her eyes on the girl.

"- they could do things others couldn't. They could feel others's emotions, and sense things before they happened."

"Oh."

Wrema's voice gets quiet, and she holds the doll a little more tightly as she looks down and away. They were like her, in a way, is what she hears Hera saying. Except --

"But they weren't navigators. For your navies."

"They could've helped with that sometimes, too," Hera answers. "But we've charted most of the space in our galaxy, and we have computers that help us, too."

Wrema frowns, thinking that over.

"It feels . . . more stable here. Space. It's not like at home. But -- do you use computers to do your 'charting'?"

She knows it's probably not a useful path to go down. If they could have done it, the Aristocra would have been researching this approach for eons.

"Are they like droids? Your computers."

That would make sense, for the calculations and feelings Wrema and Sucasa have to use to navigate the Unknown Regions. Some level of creativity and decision-making capability is important. That's probably true even without their particular sensitivities.

"We do. Explorers have traveled the Galaxy for over a thousand years, and they make maps that we program into our computers to help us calculate how to travel safely."

She takes a little more time to think over the second question. "They can be. Sometimes droid processors are used in ship's computers. Usually they don't communicate the same way, and they can't process independently the way a droid can."

Wrema thinks about this, a frown settling heavily on her face.

"Why don't they want them to process independently? Wouldn't that be good in emergencies?"

Behind them, Sucasa has found the largest stuffed animal in the place -- a massive bantha and calf -- and has snuggled into the bantha's side like she is planning to stay there for days. At least she's not trying to ride it?

"I suppose because we want to keep control of our own ships," Hera says.

"And droids usually need an ability to learn and change to function. A ship doesn't need that the same way, not to fly at least, so that's not included in its programming."

"I don't think most people would like ships that owned themselves," she allows, thinking of the Expansionary Defense Fleet and the way it reactions to all of its property.

"And it would be frustrating not to be able to change."

If she were a ship, she's thinking. (It even grates now, a little, though she still understands and accepts her duty. But she'd really like to stay here and meet all the people in this part of the galaxy. She would really, really love that.)