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Things didn't go according to plan.

They had made it to Grakkus' palace without any trouble. It was an enormous building, square and clay-colored, with a cavernous, decked out entrance hall that was already filling up when they entered. The party had been easy to join, with plenty of edges and corners to slip into, to watch the other guests, and to follow the Hutt's triumphant entrance as he introduced his prize. The crowd wasn't given much of a look at it, surprising no one, only assurances that it was highly valued by the Empire. It looked like nothing more than a large black box, and they had watched as it was carted away, down one of the side halls. Chopper had slipped away to see if he could plug into the palace's computer system, while Hera and Kanan slowly set off toward their quarry. And then –

It's about an hour and a half later, and Hera can still hear the music from the party, the bass beating through the dusty walls, even a whisper of the talk of the revelers. Which is all the more impressive given that she must be at least two floors beneath it, in a small, dark cell. There's a flickering lamp in the ceiling, and a small, barred window in the door, filtering in the dim light from the hallway. Hera is sitting on the floor, her hands shackled to the wall on either side of her. She can feel the low buzz of the shock collar against her throat, but she's not paying much attention to it.

Instead, she has spent most of the last ten minutes trying to contort herself to get close enough to kick Kanan in the shins. He hasn't moved since he was stunned with some kind of electrorod Hera had never seen before. It must've really packed a punch, because he's been out for nearly thirty minutes, as Hera finally manages to shove her feet close enough to him to stamp against his leg.

"Kanan!" she hisses. "Kanan, wake up!"

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"No, I don't think . . . no. But it's this way."

He gestures, pointing farther down the hallway.

"For what that's worth. I can't sense anyone down there, but I can hear . . . "

She turns to look down where he's pointing.

"Is this a 'we should follow it' kind of sound?"

"I think . . . "

Kanan reaches out a little more, stretching the usual bounds of his Force-use these days. It's a sad murmur of many voices, the opposite of the party up above. And, on occasion, it's punctuated by something sharper. something almost familiar.

"I almost hate to say it, but yes. Yes, we should. I don't imagine it'll take long, and maybe we'll find something helpful. I . . . I'm pretty sure we will."

"Well, it's good to have a lead."

Hera's fairly sure she could lead them back they way they were brought, but they would almost inevitably run into a guard going that way. She nods her head forward, waiting for Kanan to lead the way.

Kanan moves ahead without hesitation, brow still furrowed. Nothing's getting louder, but he feels more certain.

More . . . at home, which should be more alarming than it is.

"Here."

He doesn't pause outside the third door down the hallway, just reaches out and nudges the door open.

"I don't think it's a way out but . . . "

Where is the sound coming from? (He knows it's not a sound, it's in his mind and not his ears, but it still feels very much like voices in a vast, echoing hall.)

There's a sound at the far end of the hallway. Hera grabs Kanan's wrist.

"Good enough." She pulls him through the door with her, turning quickly to slide it closed again behind her. Then she presses herself to the door, the cone of her ear tipped against it, her hand held out toward Kanan again.

As they wait, lights along the ceiling of the room blink on. It's not until she hears the footsteps pass on the other side of the door that Hera turns, looking around the space they've found.

It looks like another hall, only this one is lined on both sides with labeled drawers. She steps along one side, spotting one label reading 'medical supplies,' another 'holos,' and then -

"Tools." Hera presses her hand to the drawer, and it slides open, revealing a mass of various tools and instruments that look as though they've been haphazardly tossed inside over years. Despite the mess, Hera begins to dig in through it, murmuring, "Oh, perfect.

"I can deactivate the collars with these, hold on -"

Edited 2018-02-09 07:09 (UTC)

"That's good," Kanan says, but his expression remains distracted, and he begins wandering idly around the space, looking for . . . .

He's not sure what. Only that sense of muttering in a crowded room grows louder and more pervasive, and much as he'd love to get this collar off (or at least deactivated) --

What's driving him is something completely different.

"I think it's over here, what I'm -- "

Hera's also distracted, rummaging through the tools. She picks out a magna-driver, tuning stylus, and power tester, and then steps over to him.

"Here, stay still a second -"

"Huh?"

Hera's closeness pulls him out of his own head, if only a little.

"All right, if you're sure -- "

He's growing more and more certain, himself, about where he needs to go next. There's a metal storage locker at one corner of the room, and that's . . . there's . . .

It's where they are. Whatever and whoever 'they' is.

She lightly presses down on his shoulder, moving him to lean forward so that she has easier access to the back of his collar. Hera works slowly - a careless mistake and, well, she doesn't really want to think about what could happen.

But after a few minutes, the buzz against Kanan's neck goes quiet. Hera takes a step back.

"All right. Don't take it off, they won't be able to tell it's shorted out."

Edited 2018-02-10 04:44 (UTC)

"Good idea," Kanan says, still half-distracted.

And then, even more slowly --

"Do you want me to do yours? I'm not sure you can reach on yourself."

It's an effort to pull his mind away from all that noise, but he makes it, because . . . this is important.

"Yeah."

She holds out the tools to him. "I'll talk you through it."

He's got a slight headache by the end of it, holding his focus so tight and narrow on what he's doing (and also so that the murmuring of whatever else is in here doesn't distract him at a key moment) -- but eventually the collar light clicks off.

He takes a deep breath, swapping the tools to one hand so he can rest the other on Hera's shoulder, patting lightly.

"Right, that's done. You make it look so easy."

It's anything but.

And then his head turns, inevitably, toward the metal storage locker in the back of the room.

"I got plenty of practice."

She holds out her hands to take the tools, figuring they might be useful for something else in here, but then she follows his gaze toward the back of the room.

"Sorry, I was - what were you saying before?"

He winces a little, shaking his head.

"Ah. Right. Sorry."

Kanan can't quite stop himself from looking at that locker, and though his words are directed to Hera, he's not facing her at all.

"I -- there's something here. It's . . . calling me. Not dangerous, just -- sad."

"Well -"

They don't have much time, but then, Kanan's senses were what let them find this room in the first place.

"Can you find it?"

"I know right where it is."

He's already moving toward the locker, tugging it open and --

"Oh."

He feels hollow. The voices were swelling as the door opened, but now they're silent as Kanan stares down at the hilts of so many, many lightsabers.

Except the room still isn't silent, which --

Edited 2018-02-10 20:09 (UTC)

"What the -"

But she breaks off. Because that's a sound Hera not only also hears, but would recognize anywhere. She glances helplessly at Kanan, but she has to find it. With one quickly abandoned gesture toward him, Hera turns, stepping right across the narrow hall to reach the drawer the sound is coming from. It's at the end, larger than the others, labeled 'unsorted.'

Her comm is at the top of another cluttered pile, along with the charges she'd tucked away and their blasters. Sparing just a second to be grateful Kanan didn't bring his own lightsaber, Hera holsters her blaster, then picks up the comm.

"Specter-3, I'm here. Yes, I know we were - well where are you?"

She picks up Kanan's blaster and motions that she's going to toss it to him. "What do you mean you're in the armory, why weren't you - no, you're not doing that, we're completing this mission -"

Edited 2018-02-10 20:22 (UTC)

Kanan turns from the other lightsabers, slowly and then faster as he realizes a blaster is about to be thrown to him.

"The armory? How'd he even -- never mind, it's Chop, when wouldn't he find the armory."

It tears at him a little to leave the 'sabers here, but there's nothing else to be done with them, and even destroying them would just seem suspicious. Maybe just having someone know where they are -- someone who used to be an apprentice -- maybe that's enough to let the spirits of their Jedi rest.

He can hope so.

"Look, did you find out where it is?"

Hera tucks her charges and holoscanner back into her pockets as Chopper describes the chamber the Imperial tech was taken to, and their likeliest route to getting there. It's only one floor above them, but still far, on the other side of the palace.

"All right. Start mapping out the nearest exits from there. And -"

Hera lets out a breath. "Maybe take a few of their thermal detonators. Just in case."

Chopper beeps an affirmative, and Hera lowers the comm, attaching it to her hip.

"Kanan," she says, stepping to him, now finally looking back to the lightsabers. "I - I don't -"

"I know," Kanan says, and if it's a little curt, all of that is entirely self-directed. "They're dead, anyway. I just wish -- "

He shakes his head, turning back to her and closing the locker door as he does so. There's nothing he can do about what happened then, not any of it. But here and now there's still work to be done. Lives to be saved.

"Where are we headed? We've still got the mission to complete, right?"

Hera watches the locker as Kanan closes it, but then blinks away, shaking her head a little before she looks back up to him.

"I think I can get us there. The route should keep us out of the path of any guards but - there'll be a couple of them at the door when we get there, so we'll have to be ready."

"If we can surprise them," Kanan says, already turning to check that any traces of their presence here have been well-covered up.

"That'll make it easier. Which means we should probably hurry."

He's eager to shake of the dust and ill-feeling in this place. The history . . . Yeah. That, too.

Hera spends a few more seconds looking through the 'unsorted' drawer, picking out a couple smoke grenades and what looks like an astromech's electroprod, before putting back the tools she'd taken and sliding both drawers shut again. "All right, let's go."

For the most part, Chopper's route works. They avoid the palace's inhabitants, or any overachieving sentry droids quick to sound the alarm again. They can still hear the party above, and in one tense moment, they duck into a doorway as two drunk guards escort a malfunctioning server droid away to be repaired.

Finally, they reach a corner, where Hera stops short, holding out her hand to Kanan. She nods her head around it - though she can't see it, she's fairly certain it turns into a hall, at the end of which will be the two guards they're expecting.

As quietly as she can, Hera reaches into her pocket, pulling out one of the stolen smoke grenades. That's her suggestion.

Kanan cuts a glance between said grenade and the guards down the hall. He meets Hera's gaze and nods, leaving his blaster in its holster and prepping himself to run down said hallway just after the smoke hits.

They're going to want to keep this quiet, if they can.

Edited 2018-02-10 23:21 (UTC)