The duracrete of the walkway was unevenly worn, some spots left wet indefinitely by puddles underneath leaking pipes and climate controls units. The puddles rippled gently with footsteps and shimmered with glints of neon that flickered on the walls. The well-worn surface was rich in ultraviolet colors, beheld by the pale eyes of the young Umbaran, out for a walk with his droid.
How the platform was still standing was a mystery. He made sure watch where walked, moving with the most gingerly of steps around the worst of the dilapidated bridge. Or what remained of it. As was common practice for him since his return from his travels, Bril Teg Arga had taken a break from his studies to take a stroll. Getting outside and experiencing the outdoors, even in a city, always helped him clear his hand and provided a much needed reset when the words on the page of whatever he was studying began to bleed together. And recently, the cool nighttime air common in Selen this time of year had worked wonders in helping him do just that.
While walking, he noticed an Umbaran man walking in his direction. It looked like he had a droid on his shoulder that looked like the same type that Anders had. Once he was in earshot, Bril began to speak while gesturing toward the droid. “Hey, is that a BD unit?”
BD-99 reacted before Adem did, hopping down to the ground and springing up onto his feet, standing tall and proud.
“Fwoo-woo!” The droid’s photoreceptors twisted in and out, cocking his head to observe Bril.
“He sure is,” the Umbaran said. “He’s BD-99, I’m Adem. You must know your stuff, they haven’t made these little guys since before I was born.”
The zabrak’s lips curled into a smile and he crouched so he was more level with BD-99. “Hello there, little one,” he said with a wave before looking back up to Adem. “I’m Bril, nice to meet you. And I try to. Droids aren’t my specialty, but having a passing familiarity with them is helpful for my research.”
Bril gestured toward the lightsaber on the man’s hip. “You a Force-wielder as well, huh?”
The question prompted a shiver of wariness down the back of his neck. Being a Jedi was no secret, but he knew the question often preceded others.
He lifted the hilt slightly from its clip to show Bril more clearly, the polished durasteel finish catching the half-light around them.
“Guilty as charged, you know your stuff,” Adem played off his apprehension by meeting Bril’s affable manner in kind. The Umbaran Jedi’s expression strained slightly as he read Bril’s presence in the weave of the Force, but discerned little. He liked BD-99, so that wouldn’t be a problem at least.
“He’s a far cry from a stock model, though, aren’t ya, bud?”
Bril leaned forward and narrowed his crystal-blue eyes to examine the lightsaber’s hilt more closely. “It’s a nice design. Simple, yet elegant.”
Bril was by no means an expert in lightsaber design but he had read up on lightsaber designs common to Brotherhood. Adem’s bore some similar design motifs to the ones he read about but it was very much his own. “I constructed a second saber for myself not long ago,” he began, reaching to his belt to unclip his saber. Then, he presented it.