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The vessel known as the Sunrider soared through the endless stream of traffic on Coruscant, a RX-Series Pilot Droid navigating to their destination based on the coordinates that had been provided. Syrena lounged in the pilot area, resting her legs against the dashboard of the ship. A large tusk-cat known Tala lay peacefully curled at her side, slumbering through the journey.
She took a deep breath, fixing her gaze on the darkening cityscape beyond the window as the ship sank down lower, into the shadowy underbelly of Coruscant.
“I never thought I’d have to return to this place again, but business is business,” She said to herself reluctantly. Syrena had spent nearly half of her life unwillingly living within the lower levels of Coruscant, locked away in a questionable nightclub before taking to the streets, until she had managed to gain her freedom. At the very least, it meant that this part of the city was all too familiar to her.
The jarring sound of scraping metal shook her from her thoughts. Syrena whirled around, only to see her dark violet nexu sharpening razor sharp claws against one of the ship’s chairs, leaving behind jagged claw marks.
“Azila! We’re borrowing this vessel,” She lightly scolded to her companion. The Nexu gave the simple lash of her tail, before obediently leaping back to Syrena’s side.
The ship began to creak to a landing, carefully settling down in the remains of what was once a bustling cargo building, now dilapidated like several other areas of this part of Coruscant, aside from the dim neon glow of nearby bars and blinking holographic advertisements.
The lift to the ship silently lowered and Syrena began to step out, drawing the hood of her white cloak over her head, casting a shadow over the features of her face all except for the pale glow of her silver eyes.
“Ce’celia Lathos shouldn’t be too far ahead. The coordinates she provided for the building housing the primary database of the security footage is just two blocks from here,” She began to relay to her teammates, as both her nexu and the tusk-cat followed behind.
“This was my flag ship,” Tisto narrowed his eyes at Syrena’s pet. “You have no idea how much I fought for this ship to be the centerpiece of House Sunrider back in the day.”
The Governor of Kaal looked to the others. “Does anyone know if COU changed the layout while I was away.? There should be twenty of so swoop bikes in the workshop I had installed forever ago.”
Tisto offered a shrug at his own question. “Wouldn’t suprise me if it did get removed though. How are we breaking into the building?”
“Very carefully” Len replied dryly though he followed through with “well until the alarms start going off and we have to run.”
The Chiss studied the map on the holo-table. His red eyes blazing as he tried to note every detail he possibly could. “We don’t have many sources on Courscant these days or this holo would be better.” The Colonel rubbed the bridge of his nose, “Realistically we could set it up as a brutish assault and use outfits, blasters, etc as cover or we would try the stealthy approach. Cleaning crew is the best option generally.” Len looked up from the table. “Thoughts?” He asked more cheerfully than he intended as he looked at the group.
“There seems to be a great deal that I don’t know about you, Tisto… I seem to be learning something new everyday,” Syrena couldn’t help but say with a glint of amusement shining in her pale silver gaze.
Her expression became one of focus yet again as she paused, listening to Len’s words in thought as a plan came to mind. As another idea struck her, a small smirk curved across her lips.
“Additionally, if we need to fit through small spaces, chew through wires, retrieve goods from people’s pockets… I could try to transform into a womp rat. Or a ginntho. Or a momong. Something that could blend in….” Syrena began to say.
“Come to think of it, now might be the time to mention that if the need arises, I could actually try to transform one of you into something as well.”
When Frenek came to, he was lying on the floor of what appeared—judging from what dim light filtered in through where the door met the floor—to be some sort of small janitorial closet. He staggered to his feet and shoved open the door.
Blinking in the new light, he recognized his compatriots, who seemed to be in the midst of debating the finer points of a stealthy plan to do some breaking and entering. He soon realized he was standing in a ship, and that one hatch had been lifted, beyond which Syrena stood, surveying the city block. Frenek wandered out to meet her. He followed her focused gaze to where it landed—on a secure-looking building. He looked back onto the ship, where discussions were unfolding. He began to get the sense that time was running out.
Taking a deep breath, Frenek summoned the reserves of his courage and bellowed, “FRENEKKKKK MAUUUUUUUSMA!!!” With that, he simply took off sprinting down the bustling streets of the planet he now understood to be Coruscant. When he arrived at the secure building, he barrelled through the front door and made his way toward the most secure server of all the servers, which was a particularly secure-looking one on level 1077. There he paused at last, sizing up the terminal before diving into it to give it some good ol’fashioned slicing. His hands became a flurry of keystrokes, and moments later, the terminal revealed some suspicious-looking security footage. “This looks suspicious,” Frenek mumbled, compulsively checking over his shoulder to ensure nobody was watching. Then, with a flourishing key stroke, he deleted the footage. “Time to blow this popsicle stand,” he muttered to himself, rising into yet another full-blown sprint towards the nearest exit.
Just as the team was strategizing a method of entry with one another, from her peripheral vision, she spotted a sudden flash of movement, and felt a gust of air as a figure rushed by. Syrena whirled around, only to see none other than her partner, Frenek Mausma, making a full on sprint towards the building.
“What? How did he even get on the ship? Last time I saw him, was when we were… Never mind that. He better not get himself killed!” Syrena muttered under her breath, hiding her concern under a mask of annoyance. Frenek had been moving so fast, he was already out of her sight.
The loud screech of alarms suddenly echoed from the building, followed by the frantic shouts of armed security, already beginning to flood the entrances.
“He’s never going to stop getting himself into trouble, is he?” She sighed as she fixed her gaze on the commotion, knowing that there was no more time for caution.
Syrena dove under the blaster fire of guards, sweeping out her leg and using a flurry of carefully aimed strikes to knock several of them to ground, before turning and making her way to where she sensed Frenek was. From the looks of it, he had already managed to hack into the system and delete the footage— But not without triggering nearly every alarm.
Finally spotting him amongst the heavy smoke and streaks of blaster fire, Syrena nearly barreled into him so that they could duck and take cover temporarily.
“There’s too many of them, we’ll be lucky if we make it out of this alive!” She shouted above the fray. Finally collecting herself, she took a deep breath.
“We’ve got this… I have a plan,” Syrena finally stated.
As the guards began to close in, the smoke and heat in the air grew heavier. Now, there was only a choice.
Syrena exchanged a knowing look with Frenek, as she concentrated, summoning a well of power to wrap around the two of them, transforming them together. A strange energy ignited in their chests, spreading under their skin.
Their bodies twisted, as bones expanded and muscles surged into monstrous forms. Flesh shifted into a thick, armor-like scaled hide. And their eyes blazed red, their jaws lined with rows of jagged fangs and long claws sharpened to obsidian points.
Rancors.
Syrena rose above the smoke in her new, massive form. Her eyes, the eyes of a rancor, blazed with primal fury. The blaster fire fell silent in shock, and Syrena seized the opportunity. Stepping forwards with a loud roar, she swung her massive arm and lashed out with claws, knocking bodies aside.
Tisto blinked, sighing at the transformation, “This seems excessive.”
Letting the Force flow through him, he called up a barrier and began to push forward himself, blaster bolts stopping just shy of him. It was tiring work, but Atleast it wasn’t whatever Syrena had decided to do. “This is going to go down as probably our worst mission yet.”
Or something close to if, but Tisto didn’t both to say that but out loud. Surely it wasn’t worse than half the times he ended up in prison. Still, this was far from being under even the thinnest cover. “You guys are going to be the death of me. Had you considered just running? Surely it would be easier than this.”
As the Dragon’s Claw dropped out of lightspeed in the Coruscant system, Edgar looked over his home planet with a familiar and annoyed look, “No matter how many times I come back here, I hate and miss it all the same,” he thought. His thoughts were only broken by the ship’s radio requesting landing clearance. Dealing with the control tower was fairly simpl,e and punching in the coordinates for the docking bay, Edgar and prepared to land.
Edgar cursed himself “You just had to stay at the casino just another hour longer, didn’t you? I mean I know i’m late but they couldn’t have gotten in too much trouble, right?”, and as he was about to land and right on cue The grey jedi’s communicator burst to life and he heard his old friend’s voice frantically calling out to him “Edgar!?! God Damit it, I don’t think he is in range that blasted … “ Cutting him off, “Len, I read you, I’m here and on the way, what is going on?”
Over the next couple of minutes of getting chewed out by his friend and rightfully so, his chiss friend relayed there location and status only to change his tone and softly say “Dear god, Syrena and Frenak turned into rancors, why are they rancors?” Hearing the distant roar of not one but two , Ed was about to ask, but was cut off quickly, “Ed, do what you have to do, but get here fast!”
“Understood, I’m on my way!” he responded as the com link fell silent. Standing up, he grabbed his gear as he left the ship and slipped almost too many credits to a dock worker to borrow the fastest speeder he could find and took off to the coordinates of his friends.
Thankfully, being from Coruscant, Edgar knew the best way to go and a few shortcuts that actually got him to his friends. relatively quickly. Turning off the speeder, Ed didn’t have a moment to even think about how he was going to find the team. The Distant Rancor roars, and an explosion nearby was all the indication he needed.
He took off running as fast as he good leaning and thankfully he always remember to do his cardio training he was able to cover the distance without being completely out of breathe but he still took a min to calm himself and then cover the remaining distance and slide in next to Len and Tisto blocking at least 2 bolts from Len thinking he was under attack.
“I know I’m late…” Tisto cutting him off abruptly,“ Shut up, Ed, we will talk about that later. Pointing at the two rancors going berserk, those 2 are Frenek and Syrena we need to deal with the remaining guards and get out of here. They have that side pretty much handled, but we need to clear a path to the ship. Do you think you can handle helping us, or do you need a nap, old man!”
“Ouch! Fair but ouch. OK, I’ll follow your lead, sir. Let’s roll!”
Vision blurring. Teeth growing.
Before he knew it, Frenek became aware that he was swiping at guards left and right, brushing them off like insects on the windshield of his speeder truck—a world that seemed all too distant now.
Blood. Gnashing of teeth.
Somewhere behind him, the rogue appendage that was his newly grown tail swiped the legs out from under a guard who had been peppering his scaly backside with blaster fire. He didn’t turn around to look at the ensuing cry of panic that met his ear holes.
Stomping. Crushing.
Frenek’s perceptual field matured into a cornucopia of chaos as a haunting howl escaped his vicious maw. He hardly noticed that the echoing call heralded the arrival of his more lucid compatriots. Dimly he hoped that they would have the sense to give him a wide berth.
Fire and smoke. Ripping and wretching.
At long last, a clearing opened up before him. His rancor eyes were filled with neon light from the streets of Coruscant beyond. Pausing and summoning the reserves of his humanity, Frenek turned to assess his rancor partner Syrena’s condition, noting the faint glimmer of recognition in her eyes, the tremor in her claws, and the violent rise and fall of her breath. For a moment, their eyes locked—two apex predators battling it out together in their element. Frenek let out another roar—softer, rising into a pseudo-question as he extended a sinewy arm towards the newly carved exit route.
There came the screeching sound of ripping metal, as Syrena rapidly tore through wires within the walls of the facility with razor sharp claws. Sparks began to rain down, the thick layer of scales in her rancor form providing an extra layer of protection from the debris.
As Frenek drew most of the blaster fire— and by the looks of it, managed to effectively withstand it in the rancor form, it was then that she spotted the rest of her team now joining them among the fray.
“Finally came to the party, eh? We got what we came here for, but not before they managed to outnumber us,” She said to Tisto and Edgar, her words trapped between ordinary speech blended with the deep roars of a rancor in her current state. Unsure of how much longer she would be able to withstand maintaining their forms, Syrena breathed a sigh of relief at the fact that her team had answered their call for aid, even if it wasn’t in the most timely manner.
“Better late than never, I suppose,” She said with a hearty laugh.
As Frenek moved ahead and left the building, Syrena barreled through their remaining adversaries. Screams cut through the air as Syrena, the rancor standing before them lowered her massive head, jaws snapping.
As one of the guards rose their blaster in preparation to fire towards her teammates, he was yanked up mid turn like a rag doll and bitten clean through the shoulder with a wet, crunching snap. Syrena flung the limp body aside and pressed forwards, her eyes wild with primary fury.
“Hey, Syrena! Relax… You’re still in there, right?” Came the familiar voice of Edgar from somewhere nearby. Finally called back to her senses, Syrena managed to see through the haze of her transformation and regain control over herself.
Smoke began to grow thicker in the building, the rising blaze of a fire now steadily underway. This whole place is getting ready to blow, Syrena thought to herself. Without another minute to waste, she shoved Edgar and Tisto towards the exit, using her thick hide to block the first explosion with a roar of pain, as flames scorched across her back.
Syrena used her claws to drag herself forwards, escaping alongside the rest of her team from the burning building. The rancor suddenly collapsed in the streets, smoke rising from her charred scales.
Struggling to remain conscious, Syrena’s and by extension Frenek’s forms shifted back to their ordinary states. She laid on the ground in her usual white armor, now stained with ash and torn along her upper back in the areas where her skin was badly burnt.
“Let’s get back to the ship and get the heck out of here. And I’ll probably need a damn bacta tank,” was Syrena’s last transmission to her team through her comlink, before her eyes closed.
Blinking several times under the stark neon light of the Coruscant street, Frenek noticed that colors looked normal again. And the street was back to normal size—or rather, he was. Frenek turned completely around, surveying the scene. His eyes flitted from explosion to explosion before he was assailed by an unnerving sight: Syrena had collapsed in the middle of the street.
Rushing to her side, he noticed that she was unconscious but still breathing. He knelt to pick her up and hustled back toward the ship on which they had arrived. When he got back to the ship, he navigated through the ship’s corridors to the bacta tank quarters. Carefully, he prepared the tank for her and placed her in it. Despite the chaos that had ensued, he thought she looked serene even now.
When he was sure the instruments were all in working order, he tore himself away from the quarters and returned to the ship’s exit hatch to watch for Edgar and Tisto to return safely.
Once the rest of the team were all aboard the ship, Frenek assumed the pilot’s seat. He fired up the engines and lifted the ship out of the crowded city block, as the building exploded below them. The job was done, and Frenek was getting them out of there.