Most of Jeff’s head had been destroyed in the blast, the only part left was the mangled remains of what used to be its lower Jaw and even then it was scorched into an unrecognisable hunk of charcoal that was barely attached to its main body. Atin sent Sparky back to the base and about an hour later he was replaced by Floaty, it would be their job to get the most out of Jeff’s body that they could, Atin wanted to get the highest possible value out of the Hybrid worm in the limited amount of time they had so shortly after Floaty Arrived they got to work. As per Floaty’s database the best cut of meat on a Joopa comes from the mid-section of its body, however the scales Jeff inherited from his krayt dragon DNA made the task impossible even with the help of Atin’s Vibroblade, after some deliberation Atin Decided that he would Climb inside Jeff’s remains and cut the meat out from the inside.
“Master Atin, In Anticipation of such an eventuality I’ve asked Sparky to procure an acid resistant hazmat Suit. Sadly, this is the best he could come up with.” Floaty Stated while holding up a pile of dirty rags.
“Better than nothing I suppose.” Atin Answered before quickly jerking his head away after catching a whiff of the rags. “Did that malfunctioning droid get the Foulest smelling thing he could find?”
“I believe both Sparky and I lack the hardware necessary to detect smells, therefore this is most likely not a case of him malfunctioning.”
“That’s not what I mea-, never mind.” Pinching his furrowed brow Atin replied and started wrapping the rags around his body. “I can live with it, how long do we have until sunset?”
“2 hours and 3 minutes until the night cycle begins, accounting for travel time we can only afford to disassemble Jeff for another hour and a half before it becomes too dangerous to be outside,” Sparky replied.
“That should be more than enough time, Run a scan and make sure I’ve covered everything.” Atin replied and stood with his arms raised for sparky to begin scanning.
Floaty circled Atin a few times bathing him in blue light all the while before answering “You have achieved 100% coverage, it is safe to proceed.”
The opening into Jeff’s body created by the explosives was barely large enough for Atin to crawl into, so getting on his hands and knees he began his work. The first thing Atin took note of was the membrane that protected the rest of Jeff’s body from its own acid, near the entrance every one of his movements resulted in the membrane breaking and covering him in blood, gore and whatever other bodily fluids he’d rather not know the nature of, the further he went the stronger the membrane became until eventually it resembled something similar to rubber covered in slime.
About an hour later, a jet black Fist sized pearl Clanked as it fell to the floor after being pushed out of what used to be Jeff’s neck, following that came what looked like 5 perfectly circular, soft, transparent eggs. Unlike with the pearl Atin took special care with the eggs, instead of hastily shoving them through the opening, he used both hands to give them directly to floaty who hovered next to the opening waiting to take them. After taking care of that, Atin crawled out of Jeff with 3 lengths of flexible Durasteel cable tied to his waist and breathing heavily due to pure physical exhaustion.
“That was barely enough cable,” Stretching his limbs until he felt his joints pop Atin Spoke to Floaty. “Bring the speeder truck around, the chunks I cut off are too big to pull out ourselves so we’re going to have to tow it, oh and how much time do we have left till sunset?”
“As you wish master Atin, We currently have 53 Minutes of daylight left. Plenty of time to retrieve all our spoils and return to the relative safety of our abode.”
The speeder truck didn’t have to pull much before 3 large Chunks of meat, each almost as large as the bed of the speeder truck plopped on to the floor. Loading their precious cargo into the truck bed the duo started their journey back to the ship.
Atin leaned back in the passenger seat, an elbow propped up by his raised knee and held the pearl close to his eyes as he inspected it, After a few seconds of staring at the pearl Atin could have sworn that he saw movement but after a few more seconds he decided it was just his mind playing tricks on him. Turning to Floaty he questioned, “so what are the chances those eggs are even alive?”
“Normally its next to impossible for a hybrid, let alone one designed in a lab to have viable offspring but for now all primary scans show signs of life, I’ll need more advanced equipment to determine whether or not they’ll survive in the long term though. If they do I’m positive my former masters would be very interested in buying them, such research material would prove invaluable to any cloner in the galaxy and If that pearl is similar to those found in a krayt dragon, then it’s probably valuable enough to buy a salvaged ship capable of getting us off this planet” Floaty answered as they neared the cargo bay doors
“That’s where you’re wrong Floaty.” Atin Stated as the Speeder truck came to a stop, “this pearl is worth enough to buy a brand new battle cruiser.” Atin paused for a moment before muttering to himself “though for some reason it feels like I should keep it, strange.... I’ve never held any interest toward jewels before.”
After Cutting up and storing most of the meat in the hastily repaired refrigerators, Floaty began cooking and a mouth-watering scent filled the air. “The food should be ready in the next 30 minutes” Floaty answered Miilo for what felt like the 50th time and let out a robotic sigh as he heard the little girl let out an impatient huff. “If master Atin would be so kind as to entertain the mistress while I prepare your needlessly costly meal for you?”
“Careful Floaty, All that sass might overload your CPU. Then who’s going to cook our needlessly costly meals for us?” Atin Answered, earning a quiet chuckle from Miilo. The two were seated at a counter in Atin’s workshop, the heavily altered kitchen was once again serving its primary purpose of preparing meals and for some reason this reality put a smile on Atin’s face. “Okay little one, let me tell you the story of the new Mandalorians while we wait, unless you want to stress floaty into overheating. Wait do you!?” Atin looked at Miilo with a clearly fake expression of shock.
“Noooo! No overheating!” Miilo replied in a panic and continued “Tell the story! Tell the story!”
So for the next 30 minutes Atin Told Miilo about the rise and fall of the new Mandalorians, he told her how Jaster Mereel tried to institute a cultural reform, how he created the Supercommando Codex in an effort to have Mandalorians keep their warrior ways and fight as honourable mercenaries while shedding the savagery and brutality tied to old Mandalore. He told her about Tor Vizsla who opposed him and of Jango Fett, Mereel’s adopted son and eventual heir. He told her about how the betrayal of Mereel’s second in command cost him his life and of how Jango proved himself a true Mandalorian in the following battles, becoming a thorn in Visla’s side as he sought to avenge Mereel’s death as well as realise his adoptive fathers dream. When Atin got to the point in the story where Vizsla and the governor of Galidraan framed the new Mandalorians for massacring innocent civilians he could tell that Miilo was invested. The way Atin described it, Jango fought a small army of Jedi to the point of killing more than a dozen with his bare hands before being defeated and sentenced to slavery on false charges. Seeing the awkward face Miilo made at the mention of Jango being sold into slavery Atin quickly moved on to how Jango escaped, regained his armour and got his revenge on the governor and Vizsla before leaving Mandalore forever. Atin ended his story saying that if it wasn’t for Mereel and Jango the current peace on Mandalore wouldn’t exist, he explained how Jango’s name was still tarnished on his home world and that most didn’t know about the service he did the people of Mandalore.
“I don’t like that story.” Miilo told Atin after he finished his story and floaty put the food on the table.
“Why not?” Atin asked, ruffling Miilo’s hair and ignoring the displeased pout on her face.
“The hero doesn’t get to be happy at the end and everyone still hates him.” Miilo replies looking up at Atin with eyes slightly glossed over from the tears that threatened to start falling.
“Well, real life often doesn’t have happy endings, not ones that last anyway.” Atin states.
“That’s a dumb lesson for a story.” Miilo replies, folding her arms and hanging her head.
Hearing a poorly hidden sniffle Atin speaks up again “Ok…… how about never give up? Jango lost everything and was sold into slavery, but he still fought his way out and got revenge, freedom and he even gave Mandalore an opportunity to have a lasting peace. Hmmm oh and on another note when I heard that story my mother said Jango’s sister went missing, not that she died so he’s probably somewhere in the galaxy looking for her, heck maybe he even found her already. That a better ending?” Atin had purposefully left out the fact that Jango was already killed at the start of the clone wars.
Miilo let out one more sniffle before nodding her head and digging in to the meal presented to her. An hour later Floaty entered the workshop with a blanket in his arms, after today’s events Atin had passed out almost immediately after the meal and Miilo had curled up on his side, her face buried in his midsection as almost inaudible snoring noises escaped her nose. Floaty covered the two before switching off the lights and leaving the room. Turning to face the waiting sparky he spoke, “It looks like master Atin’s data was correct, I’ve never seen the mistress so content before. It seems having a variety of different tasting fuel leads to the visible relief of mental stress in organics.
“It better,” sparky replied, “I had to go through a lot to get those strange things you and the brat asked for.”
A/N: Sorry for the wait, next SS will cover how Sparky is able to get all this weird, task specific shit, but that’s a while away for now
