Dangerously Damaged 10

Dangerously Damaged

Chapter 10

-VB-

What was the definition of a country?

According to Wikipedia (from Earth Aleph), a country was a distinct territorial body, a state, a nation, or other political entity and that there was a sense of sovereignty the word carried.

A country was not part of another country. A country was a whole and separate entity. It had a people, territory, identity, and more.

So.

How could I make my own country? I had a place, the Three 5th Streets. I had the start of a people, myself and my pregnant wives. What we lacked to become a country was more people, a sense of unity to keep them all there, and an economy to keep us fed independently.

… Well, I had a Door open to the Star Wars universe. On Coruscant alone, there were plenty of people who would sell their first borns to get out of their place. Literal hundreds of billions have never seen stars in person, and would join me in a heartbeat.

So that’s what I did.

I opened a path for them to see the stars themselves.

-VB-

May 17, 2010

It’s one thing to see an alien world from an apartment room where she got railed everyday.

It was another to see actual aliens!

She watched as Brandon opened a portal and people began to come through.

Most of them… were human?

“Umm, Brandon?” she spoke up to her newborn daughter’s father.

“Hmm?”

“Most of them are human.”

“Yes.”

“Why are most of the aliens human?”

“Humans make up more than 50% of the planet that I am taking immigrants from,” he replied as men, women, children, and actual aliens came through wearing clothes that wouldn’t be too out of place in New York City. They looked around cautiously.

“Welcome!” Brandon spoke up as he closed the portal behind what looked like a thousand people and then walked up the wooden platform he’d prepared beforehand using his magic. “To your new home!” He let them murmur among themselves before he spoke up again. “Translators are working, yes?”

Most of the people nodded or showed other signs of positives.

“Good. Now, say hi to Taylor to my left. Taylor, go ahead and wave for them,” his no longer pregnant woman did, seated behind a plastic desk and with a number of boxes around her. “She will be the one taking in your names, number of your dependents, and what kind of jobs you can do. Right now, I am looking for people who could work with people and machines. Even if you can’t, I have other jobs lined up for you, so step it up! Once she has you and your family’s names and occupations down, she will give you a key to your new house. Yes, all of you are getting your own houses!”

Emma rolled her eyes at how Brandon played up the giddy and uplifting thing with the people here.

As people began to move, she finally singled out an actual alien.

“Hey, Brandon. What do you call those people? The blue one right there.”

“Hmm?” he looked down at her and then looked at the woman he was pointing to. “Oh, that’s a twi’lek. They come from a tidally locked world in the Outer Rim. They have been subject to a lot of slavery. That woman there is no slave, so don’t call her a slave or treat like her one, please.”

“I won’t. What about him?”

“He’s a Mirialan.”

“Why are there so many races who look like humans?”

“Because humans are the origin species for many of them.”

She blinked. “Huh. So … like a subrace or subspecies?”

“Yes.”

“Like the difference between a chihuahua and greyhound?”

“Yes.”

“Huh.”

“Brandon, I got the packets you asked me for. Are these actual letters and words?” her sister asked as she walked up to them from behind. She held a number of paper packets in her hands.

“Yes. Can you go and give each of them a packet whenever Taylor hands out a key?”

“Sure.”

-VB-

Eldra stared at the key and the paper - PAPER! - packet in her hand.

And then she looked up at the metal door of the log houses that she had been just … given.

Sure, this world was definitely not a developed world and as such property value should be low, but no one just … gave out homes. She looked around.

Situated in a small circle, there were eight similar small log houses with similar number of residents assigned to each house; that being only one person resided in one small log house. There was a packed road that connected all of these houses in a circle with an empty lot in the middle.

Their landlord, a human man who called himself Brandon Marris and “king” of the Three 5th Street (whatever that meant), told everyone that the purpose of the empty lot should be decided by the people who would use them (i.e. residents of the nine log houses surrounding the lot).

As for what she would do in this new community, she didn’t know. She told the thin human young woman that she was skilled in engineering and security. And then nothing. Others were told where they would be expected tomorrow. Hell, someone got assigned to be a teacher for all of the children here.

So why didn’t she get a job?

She used the key, an archaic metal key with etches, and opened the door. She walked in and found the room to be cozy, perfectly sized for a single person if they weren’t messy or greedy.

She sighed as she walked in - locking the door behind her after a bit of fiddling - and then over to the desk and chair at the corner of the lobby room(?) and set her bag down.

This was going to be a long assignment.

The Jedi Order noticed a particularly nasty force presence on Coruscant itself that had been showing on and off irregularly. Finally, they managed to track the presence down to the under levels and followed him around as he recruited people to join him in a new colony with him as the king.

Most people had scoffed but a few had been desperate enough to show up. The Jedi Order asked her to infiltrate whatever scheme he was plotting, and she accepted.

And boy oh boy, it began with a bang because the human man with the foul Force presence opened an honest to Force portal to lead them through. This meant that she also knew nothing about where she was in relation to Coruscant.

In essence, she was isolated.

“Good evening, Jedi Knight Kaitis.”

She jolted and whirled around.

Her eyebrow shot up towards her lekku.

Sitting in the dining chair was the king himself.

How did he get in? When did he get in? She locked the door!

He also knew about her affiliation.

“I-I am not a knight or a jedi,” she lied.

“You are too honest,” he shook his head. Still wearing the slack and short pants he’d been wearing in the noon, he shouldn’t have cut an intimidating figure with how young he was, but he did. His nearly black eyes seemed to shine under the shade cast by his equally black hair.

And though his eyes weren’t yellow…

“Are you a sith?” she demanded as she slowly reached for the lightsaber that she’d hidden in her bag.

“Sith? No. I am not children who can’t control their own emotions,” he snorted as he rose up. “I’m my own little thing, and my interests are far from the Force. What I am interested in right now, however, is whether or not the Jedi Order has malevolent intentions toward me.”

“... No,” she replied, giving up on any kind of subterfuge or lies. It was clear that he knew. “How did you know?”

“I can sense the Force like a krayt dragon smells blood. The Force is … irritating. Wrong. Meddlesome,” he replied. He put down another paper packet. “This is your assignment starting tomorrow. Please don’t be late.”

She blinked. “You’re … not kicking me out?”

“Why would I?” he asked before he turned around. “As long as you pull your weight in my kingdom and don’t bother anyone, I don’t see why I shouldn’t let you stay.”

And then he left through her door, leaving Eldra befuddled by it all.

“Huh?”

And it was only then that she realized that during the entire conversation, she hadn’t sensed a lick of whatever that foul presence had been.

Was it possible that he was not the source of it but something watching him or near him had been?

Ugh, this suddenly felt too complicated.

-VB-

Brandon cooed over his three babies, and Anne knew that she was going to get diabetes from how sweet all of it was.

All four of them sat around the soft carpeted living room and on top of the fluffy wool rug on top of the carpet with the newcomers of the family, Alan, Shauna, and David born to Emma, herself, and Taylor respectively, on top of the rug.

All of them gave birth in early April, which had left Brandon to do all of the housework from how tired they all were, but it was also a measure of test for him as well; how well did he handle having the entirety of the household on his back?

Anne thought that he handled everything well, because not only did he manage to keep the house in order throughout her and the girls’ two-week-long rest, but he also managed to plan and carry out whatever his plan for the 5th Streets had been.

And … it was a giant plan.

Today, they finished the second part of his plan: recruiting “colonists” to come and live in the houses he constructed as the first part of his plan. Speaking of the houses, he made them from sturdy logs he purchased from the Canadians. She didn’t even know logging was a thing that Canadians did. Everyone only knew about Dragon and the Guild these days…

Maybe that was something she needed to improve on. Not fix because it was irrelevant information, but the fact that she remained so ignorant of anything beyond what was her immediate scope of wants and needs…

What if she got blindsided?

This was no longer just about her, Emma, Taylor, and Brandon living a debaucherous life. They had kids now, and they were very important to her.

She knew that Taylor was already looking into how she could help. Since she was the best at numbers, there was a good chance she would settle for accounting or something similar. Emma would be … public relations? It made sense because Brandon wasn’t exactly good at making good impressions. He was fantastical at playing the villain but he needed more than that to be the “king” he claimed himself to be.

So what was she going to do?

Shauna burped, and Emma and Taylor cooed at how cute she was.