uncertain_dume | In Orbit Around Endor, Kanan and Hera's GFFA, Thursday Afternoon

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In Orbit Around Endor, Kanan and Hera's GFFA, Thursday Afternoon

"So," Kanan said, leaning back comfortably in the co-pilot seat in the cockpit of the Ghost, "the way I figure, we're going on a scouting mission, right? We've got the ship, Summer's got her wobbly things, there, and now we get to go on a grand tour of the Galaxy to see if Hera and I are the only sentients who," were crazy enough to, "like Summer's jelly things. So we start with a variety, right? We've got human and Twi'lek covered, let's go with something a little different."

He gestured to the lush forest moon that appeared before them on the viewscreen, orbiting a gas giant a little farther off. Well. 'A little.' It was all a bit relative in space. There were eight other moons out there, too, but none of them were quite as lush and green as this one.

"Enter, Endor. The Island made a pit-stop there back when I was new to the place, so it isn't a complete unknown. It's in the Outer Rim, so we're about as far out as we can get without hitting Wild Space or the Unknown Regions - I promise, you won't do good business in the Unknown Regions. Probably. And it's got at least two sentient native species that might or might not have a taste for stuff suspended in more stuff, though you're more likely to see Yuzzums wandering the Galaxy than Ewoks. As far as I can tell, most Ewoks are homebodies. And I'm not saying you're going to be setting up a five-star restaurant in the middle of the jungle here or anything, but it's a start."

And, so far as Kanan saw it, since it was so far from the Imperial Core, it was possibly a good place to give Summer a first taste of their Galaxy without immediately getting shot at.

He maybe hadn't factored in spears. Or boarwolves. Or condor dragons.

"So, do we want to take the Ghost down, or leave her in orbit with Chop and take the Phantom instead? It might be easier to find somewhere to land with a smaller ship. Maybe we can even give Summer a crack at the controls."

[OOC: For those two ladies!]

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Summer could just not get over how cool it was to 1) be in a ship as nice as Ghost where every little creak and rumble wasn't a worrisome possible death sentence, 2) to be flying in space without some Eldridch god or very shooty and angry natives racing after them, and 3) be in space with people she wasn't blood related to and mostly wanted to strangle half the time. There had been many, many happy, wistful sighs as they made their way out there.

"Yeah," she said eagerly, "I'd definitely want a place with more traffic, but this is definitely a great start to seeing what your universe might be like! Oooh, and a chance to land a ship on new planet could be really good! Or...maybe...." She bit her lip, passing a few not-exactly-subtle glances to the controls of the Ghost. "I mean, all this space seems like such a great opportunity for me to learn all sort of new maneuvers, maybe on a variety of different vehicles, or, you know, whatever might be available, or something...."

An oh-so-casual trailing off there, with the sort of hopeful-but-not-really-expecting-a-yes glance over to Hera.

"Well, you're not flying the Ghost until you've got a lot more hours under your belt," Hera said firmly. "But it would be easier to take the Phantom down, anyway, so let's get going, pilot."

Summer snapped her fingers, but she couldn't be too disappointed, since it wasn't a flat out no. Those were a few more hours she wouldn't mind getting under her belt at all, especially if it meant more field trips. Or heck, even just more trips to Earth's moon. Or maybe trying to sneak out in her grampa's ship when she's stuck at home, that would totally count too, right?

But those were thoughts for another time when she wasn't about to descend onto a new planet. She quickly gathered up her purse and her samples. "They're usually friendly, though, right? These...Yazzums and Ewoks? Anything in particular I should know before we head down?"

"I know more about the Ewoks than the Yazzums, and only barely," Kanan replied, hauling himself to his feet and making his way toward the Phantom's docking bay. "The Ewoks are still a tribal race, and neither of them have managed space travel, though a few Yazzum have made their way out into the Galaxy at large by hitching rides with pilots passing by. Neither of them speak Basic."

So, there, a good taste of being in a Galaxy where people threw languages around like confetti, no matter what company they kept.

"I've never met either myself," Hera said, "though I hear they're pretty laid-back and good singers. The Yuzzum," she clarified. "I have no idea about the Ewoks."

"Well," said Summer thoughtfully, "that should be fun."

Though, really, she found that the species that she could communicate with clearly were also the ones more likely to try and kill her. Not exclusively, of course, but the track record leaned pretty heavily that way. So long as she didn't try to speak the language; she apparently had a bad habit of choosing to unwittingly say the one most offensive thing in the world to them when she thought it was just random gibberish.

"Luckily, we come bearing gifts!" Summer proudly held up her foil-covered creations. "Food is almost always a multidimensional olive branch, right? And I've got tons of music on my phone, we might connect with them that way, too."

The more she spoke, the more her excitement amped up. "Ohmygod, this is so cool."

Who'd have thought you could just go to planets to get to know different places and not to try to steal shit from them or because you were on the run from other planets or whatever other problematic reason Rick was going there?

Not on the run? Wow, was Kanan the wrong person to ask, there.

But then, he'd been Kanan for a while now, and the Empire was still looking for Caleb, so they would probably be fine.

"Don't go on many interstellar field trips, huh?"

"Not ones like this," Summer admitted a little sheepishly, finding a good place to secure the jello before settling into the Phantom. "I mean, we used to go all the time, before I came here, but there was always...a catch, with my grampa. It was never just...let's go and check out this planet! It was always, we have to go to this planet because I need crystals that are highly illegal everywhere else in the galaxy, so we can't let anyone know we're getting them. Or, hey, my dad ate experimental bacteria ice cream and now he has to be rushed to some alien hospital where apparently his wang is the only thing that can save some big shot space humanitarian. Or, hey, let's go to Bird World for a wedding, only it's not a wedding, it's a trap, so now we have to find the three inhabitable planets outside of Federation space or else we'll all get killed, those sorts of things. Or that one time we had to go to a planet to sort out the fact that my brother had a half-alien baby with some sex robot he picked up in a space pawn shop."

She was just going to pause and let that sink into their brains for a moment.

"So this is nice," she concluded, "unless you've got secret beef with Ewoks you're not telling us about." Her eyes went directly to Kanan because, not only did Hera mention she'd never met any of them before, but she couldn't imagine secret beef between them even if she had.

"No secret beef with the Ewoks," Kanan said, holding up his hands and grinning a little. It was easier than potentially breaking his brain by spending too much time dissecting all of that.

Honestly.

"Believe me, if I had any problem with them, I would have had plenty of other worlds to choose from. Big galaxy, you know?"

"We'll try to avoid any beefs with the Ewoks," Hera said. Or becoming Ewok-beef. "Okay, so you've flown Kanan's ship, right? The controls are pretty standard. Ignition's here, fuel mixture's here, and the instruments..." She trailed off. "Wait, how's your Aurebesh?"

And Summer nodded along, making a clear point of checking the readings and things like that so that BDG noticed.

Until, of course, that last part.

"Uhhhhh," she said, "probably not very good, considering I don't know what that is?"

Hera groaned, just a little. "Okay, that makes it a little more complicated." She turned on the power and the displays lit up; she pointed at the main one. "That's Aurebesh. Luckily the numbers are pretty similar..."

She looked over at Kanan helplessly. What was the best way to go about this?

Summer turned toward Kanan, too, her brows drawn in nervously. Was that something he'd taught her and she'd just forgot? Or did he not teach her something that wound up leaving her in a spot to disappoint Miss Hera? Because that was laaaaaame.

Kanan kind of held up his hands in surrender.

"She reads High Galactic," he explained. "Aurebesh is just our dominant writing system here, it's actually pretty easy to pick up. We can talk you through what the controls do as we go until you start to pick it up, there aren't even that many more letters in our alphabet than yours, I promise."

Hell, some ships even had the writing in High Galactic. They were harder to find, and mostly relics of an older time, but...

"Worst case scenario, next time we go flying, I bring a pack of those sticky paper things and a pen and just label everything. This is not a disaster."

Hera gave him a look for that before turning back to Summer.

"Okay, so right now I'll keep an eye on the dials and let you know. We can go over Aurebesh later. Kanan's right; it should be pretty easy. For now, just know that this shows everything's okay and waiting for you, this shows we're docked, and this shows the magnetic locks are on so we don't go anywhere."

See, and now Summer was all nervous, but she bit her lip and told herself that she really shouldn't be. She'd done this before, both in BDG's ship and her grampa's hunk of junk, so she had this, she just needed to chill out a little.

"Right," she said, "so..." And she talked through the process ~~that her mun was not even going to try to attempt~~ as she tentatively set about getting them away from Ghost and onto Endor.

"See," Kanan said, sounding as encouraging as he possibly could because, so help him, sometimes it was rough being the guy who knew what the people around him were feeling, "Summer's got this. We went over it all a few times already before, and the Phantom isn't all that different than the Escape."

Well. It was shaped a hell of a lot differently.

"You're doing good, Summer. You'll be flying circles around half the pilots in the galaxy, at this rate."

Space Dad emerges.

Hera grinned at her. "You remembered to loose the clamps first," she said, "that already puts you ahead of a lot of them."

Summer wasn't exactly going to be an ace straight off, but she was doing pretty good for a relative beginner.

"Now we're headed for here," she pointed it out on the display, "and this shows there's no debris or obstructions in our way, so if you want to, you can put on a bit more speed."

Because Space Mom she might be, but she was also a hotshot pilot.

A bit more speed was exactly what Summer intended, too. What she got, though, was a nice little jolt and surge from the nice cocktail of nervous and excitement running through her. She cringed, gripping the controls much too tightly as she tried to smooth out the increased speed.

"Sorry."

[[and sorry here, too, guys! my brain decided it needed to take a nice long break from....everything yesterday]]

"Hey, relax," Kanan said calmly, even as his hand reached down to grip the edge of the seat on the side of his chair opposite Summer's field of vision. "Take it easy, work your way up to it. There's no hurry, we can kill an hour or two up here just letting you get a feel for flying this thing before we go anywhere down there."

Unless the jello melted first. That would be unfortunate.

[OOC: No worries! Happens to us all.]

Although Summer would like to think that she could manage to spin "jello soup" as a thing, especially to people who had never even known was regular jello even was.

Still, she had to make a small face at the suggestion. "An hour or two?" she asked. "I mean, flying's great, but I can practice landing on my own dumb old moon. The one that doesn't have Yazzums and Ewoks to meet and mingle with."

Edited 2018-01-27 21:27 (UTC)

"Fair enough," Kanan replied, holding up the hand that wasn't currently in a death grip on the chair. "Fly around until you're ready to bring her down, then. The locals aren't going anywhere, but I can take you up over Earth again another time to get those hours in."

"Or I can," Hera said. "You should get to know a few different ships. For now, you can head down here. It's at the edge of the forest, so equal chance of seeing Yuzzums or Ewoks."

"Yesssssssss," said Summer, gripping the wheel, bouncing slightly, grinning in a faintly manic way that might have made weaker hearts worried.

But, despite the clear excitement, she was extra careful not to lurch on the acceleration again as she brought the little ship down toward the ground. Her jaw was clenched as tight as her knuckles as she poured every bit of concentration into pulling off the perfect landing.

Which it most certainly wasn't. But it could have been a lot worse.

"See? Practically a professional now."

He'd check for damage to the chassis once they got back to the island.

"Maybe we'll get Hera to dock her into the Ghost when we head back, though. That requires a little more finesse."

A lot more finesse.

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