heading straight for the castle || @helmsmcn
⇴ – ;; The past year had been a disorganized, unintelligible mess; regardless of the relief that being separate from the Galra empire had proved to offer, Tixxis had found little more freedom on this primitive planet than she had to begin with. It was no secret that with the state of things as they were, Galra wouldn’t exactly be welcomed by other planets, even without them presenting a threat of violence; it seemed that amongst her own people, she was almost another breed, but here, she was exactly the same as them. The Galran female could always appreciate irony, but she didn’t feel deserving of this degree of karmic retribution.
Even so, she had made some degree of a name for herself through weapons trafficking; prejudiced as most of the planet’s inhabitants were, she quickly found that it was the only way to survive. But regardless of any semblance of a reputation she may have earned, the treatment she received here was only barely better than it had been before, and it became clearer and clearer as the year went on that she couldn’t handle another one in this hellhole. That revelation left her with minimal options at best, including only buying her own ship (with the elevated prices used for foreigners like herself), stealing one, and hitchhiking. The former seemed increasingly impossible, the Galra female making barely enough to pay rent as it was, and while hitchhiking was relatively feasible, there was no means of controlling where she would end up. The mentality of ‘anywhere is better than here’ still held some merit, but it was also what had landed her here; and at least here, she knew how things worked. She had experience, and while it was far from a home, she had a place to stay.
This left her with what was easily the most difficult and dangerous of options. Logic told her to reevaluate, that she still had enough to lose that she shouldn’t risk it; but it was obvious to Tixxis that the longer she waited, the further she would solidify her half life on this planet and keep her from leaving it.
With her experience as extensive as it was, the heist had gone incredibly well so far; she was in the ship, she was unnoticed. It was the three minutes after that success that left her absolutely and unmistakably screwed. She’d had the wonderful choice of either taking it slow and risking not getting off of the planet at all, or speeding out of there as quickly as possible and getting shot down and killed. Confident in the arsenal she had at her disposal should she end up crashing and needing it, the latter seemed (debatably) like the better plan; in retrospect, she decided as she sat in her broken mess of a ship on a seemingly uninhabited planet, it was, in fact, not.
Sending out a distress beacon seemed to be an equally risky choice; after all, if a Galra ship happened to have some reason to be interested in it, she was as good as dead. But with the injuries she’d earned on her rocky trip down here and the rations she’d brought that would last all of one week, it was fairly clear that not sending one was an equally deadly choice. It was clear to her that there really wasn’t a choice at all.
It had been roughly 28 hours before the light of a ship finally stole her attention; at this point, she’d fashioned an admittedly terrible shelter out of her fire hazard of a ship, and made sure to fit as many of her weapons as she could salvage into her jacket and bag in hopeful preparation. From her comfortable pile of stolen and tattered emergency blankets, the stranded Galra’s yellow eyes were clouded by suspicion and apprehension as they focused on the ship that drew closer and closer. As it began its landing, she quickly drew to her feet, hand holding tightly to the blaster beneath her jacket.
If nothing else, it wasn’t purple. Whoever this was, at least they weren’t Galran.
Stars, please let this go well.
