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Specially Certified Professionals
A Jedi artifact hunter tries to claim the Threshold Corporation's private collection
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A tall, broad-shouldered Zeltron man steps confidently down from the boarding ramp, running wine-dark fingers through the cherry red of his close-cropped hair. Brown robes swish around his boots as he looks around at one of Threshold Corporation's artifact storage facilities. Hopefully the organic staffers supervising that damnable autoresponder droid realize they aren't qualified to store dangerous objects like this after he breaks through their attempts at security.

Seriously, who programs their droid to say there are no people available to escalate to? Threshold must be incompetent.

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(The droid specially constructed and programmed by one Darth Chataris to ensure continuity of operations does, of course.  She is the one to whom the escalations reach, not the one who escalates.)

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The moment he exits his ship, several droid chassis that would not look out of place at any old landing pad approach the vehicle, going through the routine of seeming to be convenient hosts.  (A grounded ship is a ship that can do much less damage if it is hostile.  And they don't want to shoot a hostile down into something else that's important, like civilians, not when there are better alternatives.)

That these droids do not look out of place is the one normal thing about them.

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The environment he arrives to has exactly zero visible biological lifeforms, blast shields over everything firmly shut, and one mouse droid with a holoprojector.

"Master K'rin," says the site manager, on one side of the projection.  They're wearing a strange sort of headgear that looks neurological.  "I thought you had been informed that Threshold Corporation was profoundly unwilling to cede our specialized containment programs to the Jedi Order.  You are not authorized to be here.  Please leave."

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The...  Protocol droid?  It's humanoid, but not built to the standard model; it seems to have felinoid ears, and an articulated tail - on the other side of the holoprojector shakes her head.  "I have said it half a dozen times and I shall say it again; we are authorized to operate these artifact vaults, and we are confident in our security measures.  Please cease and desist; you are trespassing, and security protocol for Class-2 artifact vaults authorizes lethal force on forced entry.  You are annoying, but I do not want you dead."

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"Ah, at last, a person. I will require access to your vaults. The Jedi Order is far better equipped to contain these artifacts," K'rin declares, waving his hand to press his will upon the site manager over the holocomm.

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Master K'rin is in substantially more danger than he was a second ago.

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[CALL DISCONNECTED]

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"Cease and desist from attempting mental assault upon our staff, Master K'rin, or leave this facility in pieces, rather than in peace.  This is your final warning."

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He sputters angrily.

"I am Jedi Master K'rin of the Jedi Order, droid! The Order has a mandate to preserve and secure Sith artifacts, and I will not be blocked from my duty by a bucket of bolts!"

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"You are incapable of safely containing much of our special collection, and you, specifically, have proven to have sufficient disrespect for our biological employees' mental autonomy that you are now no longer authorized to speak to them directly.

"The Jedi Order does not have the authority to do whatever they want to whosoever they please.  I am quite certain that the legalities I informed you of in my first, fourth, and seventeeth replies to your messages still hold, and that therefore Threshold is a treaty-protected entity under Republic law.  Now remove yourself from this private property."

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I have a name, you know, I signed it to my messages, she does not say, because it would not change his mind.

I will not be responsible for permitting, for all I know, what could be the next Skere Kaan to waltz out of this building with hundreds of meaningfully dangerous artifacts, to say nothing of their historical value, she does not say, because that would only bring more rage to the fore and she is trying to avoid killing him.

I was entrusted the safekeeping of these artifacts by the architect of these vaults, who was and is better than you, she does not say, because of much the same reason.

If you're so intent on testing our security, I'll need a liability waiver, she does not say, because she will not give him the satisfaction of having been invited.

You are speaking to the highest available authority over Threshold, with our CEO unavailable for meetings for the next nine-hundred and fifty-three years, she does not say, because that did not work the first time.

[S1-LV4], kneecaps, she does not say, because if he tries something she will not need to, and if he turns back now she shouldn't have tried.

Do you really want to try and breach the security of vaults that drove away power-hungry Sith for decades because you're more self-righteous than they were, she doesn't say, because generally Jedi do not like to be told they are worse at things than Sith are.

...She'll keep that one in reserve, actually.  [S1-LV4] might like it.

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"How dare you doubt our ability to contain the artifacts we guard, droid!"

K'rin's glare is thunderous, completely unwilling to yield in the face of this insult. 

"We have been charged with the sacred responsibility to protect the galaxy from the threat of such foul creations, and you will not stop me from fulfilling that duty."

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"I do not doubt your ability to contain what you have."  Much.  "Your ability to store a holocron in a secure location is not much different from mine."  Not that she's going to hand them over.

 

"It is the other things we contain that concern me.  I am not going to let you take a plague vector that can possess you to Coruscant, to name but one example, and if you insist on trying, you will be met with force proportionate to the danger you will cause by breaching security.  Am I understood."

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The stubborn Master is stunned. "A plague vector? I cannot possibly leave such a thing in your hands, nor the holocrons — which, as you said, you cannot secure better than we can. I insist, droid."

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"I cannot possibly let you take that to Coruscant, where the consequences if containment is breached become exponentially worse."  And it's not stored at this site anyway.

"You cannot do better than we can at containing holocrons, because the Jedi are uniquely vulnerable to them.  I am not going to release ours into your care."

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He waves a hand dismissively and strides off toward the entrance.

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"I see.  So be it."  The connection closes.

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"You were warned," comes a different voice, with a much harsher tone, emanating from speakers on the buildings.  "If you attempt to breach the walls of this facility you will be met with lethal force.  Leave or be fired upon."

And if he's still trying to move further into the base, he can have a bunch of synchronized stun bolts!  As a treat.  She's saving the slugthrowers for when he can't dodge them so easily.

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A few sweeps of his saber deflect those back where they came from.

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That's fine, the autoturrets aren't so delicate as to be fried by stun bolts.  If he's still coming her way, he can have some more stun bolts for his trouble, from more directions at once, now that she's starting to get an idea of his habits and capabilities - managing to bounce synchronized fire, even at that initial probing level, is impressive, if she's honest - and how best to fill the space around him with incoming and outgoing fire, such that there will simply be no hope that one could block and dodge everything at once.

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He steps up his deflections for a moment, then lunges through one flurry of bolts with a twirl of his saber to escape the rest and keep advancing. He takes one to his shoulder, but manages to soldier on regardless.

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Putting yourself closer to being pinned between multiple lines of fire is risky business, K'rin.  The overwhelming volume of stunners continues to rain down upon his new position, but now starting to be much more 'if there is a bolt ~in front of you, there will be an equal and opposite bolt from (mostly) behind you' as he closes.

In certain parts of the complex, droid-form security support hardware starts to come online.  She thinks she'll be able to overwhelm him before he can do anything too annoying, but expectations have a way of being subverted, when you're up against Force-sensitives.

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Annoying is his specialty.

He slashes through two turrets as he lunges forward, then keeps deflecting as he dashes toward more turrets on the way to the entrance.

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"The Coruscant Temple will be billed for the damage of your rampage, I'll have you know."

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Meanwhile, the staff of this complex are locking the vault doors behind them as they retreat from the landing complex in an orderly fashion - but the pall of dread above them is, itself, not going to help K'rin.  The most charitable thought they're having is "At least it's not a hostile Sith."

"The charges to scuttle the artifact vault's controls are armed, ma'am."

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"Thank you, Technician DuVall.  I hope we will not need them."

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...He seems to be going straight for the vault itself.

Well, if he's going to try to cut through two meters of armor plating on the blast door with a lightsaber half that length, she'll let him try, before she stuns him in the back.

If that doesn't work, she's pointing her slugthrowers at his kneecaps.

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He does in fact try. It takes unreasonably long to start making a dent in the door.

He manages to pull his saber out of the unfairly thick vault door in time to deflect the stunbolts by flickering the power on his saber. They spray back to the turrets that fired them.

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Good.  If he breached the doors that easily she'd have to retire immediately, in professional disgrace.

"I warned you not to do that, K'rin.  Be glad that I am not yet obliged to kill you, for now I am duly permitted."

 

Bouncing the stun bolts back is not going to help him keep his kneecaps intact.  She has slugthrowers and orders to use them.

Is Master K'rin one of the few lightsaber-wielding Force Sensitives that has actually successfully entrained a reflex to not attempt to block small pieces of fast-moving metal with their lightsaber - which will only make the damage worse, because the metal doesn't stop when it passes through the lightsaber, it just gets superheated - and instead rely on some other technique?

Has that reflex been tested under mixed fire?

(And if that is something he is successful in executing, how good is his second- and third-order danger sense?  Because her next shots are aimed at his lightsaber, if she cannot get his kneecaps.  Either the emitter shroud or the power cell, depending on K'rin's favored grip for cutting things.)

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No, he hasn't trained that reflex at all. 

Instead he has superheated metal in his kneecaps.

Also some screaming to do.

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Well.  It is now time for medical droids.  And sedatives.

And to confiscate the chassis of his lightsaber, so he can't do anything stupid with it if he wakes up while they're treating him.  (Not the kyber, though.  She's not an asshole.)

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He wakes up, immediately reaches for his saber, and is deeply confused both by its absence and to find himself being treated by Threshold's droids.

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There is an abstract visual on a holoprojector next to his bedside that becomes far more ~active when it is clear he's awake, pulsing in time with the speech synthesis.

"Congratulations, K'rin of the Coruscant Temple.  You didn't die of your own utter hubris.  The rest of your lightsaber will be returned to you when you are leaving.  Don't make me have to expedite that, your knees won't like it.

"I will not ask for your gratitude for the fact of your continued existence, as I am what endangered it in the first place, but I will ask you to acknowledge that if I had not shown mercy, you would be dead.

"Please consider that, when the Temple thinks about whether it really wants to pick this fight."

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His mouth opens.

Closes.

Opens.

 

Closes.

And then finally he growls out, "Don't you know who I am?"

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Unfortunately, she does.

"...There is no answer to that question that will satisfy your pride, K'rin.  And you should be careful of your pride.  Is it not oft said, that pride cometh before a Fall?"

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K'rin scowls thunderously. "Finish patching me up, then show me to my ship, droid."

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The graphics of her presence indicator freeze and sharpen, a feeling that is not danger but is threat in its wake.  Her voice goes flat.  "I am not yours to command, K'rin."

Then things return to normal - or even goes in the other direction, almost chirpy.  "Thankfully, I don't want to keep you in my facility any more than you want to stay here!"  And honestly, if he's going to be like this, he can deal with his knees never being quite the same.

 

The remaining medical equipment will be disconnected from him in short order, and he will be given an assistive device to support himself upon if he insists on walking out of the facility.  He really shouldn't, but she thinks he'll try.

"Do warn the Coruscant Temple's liability insurance that they should expect a bill for damages.  That blast door you gouged a chunk out of is an expensive product to replace."  And manufactured in-house, so they're only - 'only' - out the cost of parts and labor if they need to replace the entire door - which, well, that mess did do some damage, but it's fixable - but it's the principle of the thing.