[M] Gun Running [Complete]

[Luci]

***

Luci floats through a grey-scale dreamscape echo of Tier-5, her spray-paint can at the ready. The Astral Realm distorts sounds and shadows, warping them strangely, giving a surreal weirdness to every movement. Luci is not afraid. She passes by Moss, Klowdy's first lieutenant.

The area around Moss is flashing with brightly colored lights, contrasting with the grey of the Astral Realm around him. He is getting a lap-dance from a Twi'lek stripper. Luci floats on.

Luci sees Lyon, Klowdy's second lieutenant. He is sobbing, and holding the body of a young elven woman with a burn hole in her chest. She flinches, and floats on.

Klowdy's astral presence is strong. Whereas his friends light up a small ten-foot area with their dreams, Klowdy lights up a whole city block with color. He dreams of merchants and performers and families with laughing children and a hundred other people living happy, peaceful lives.

Luci follows behind him curiously, easing her way through the crowd. Klowdy is laughing with a group of young elves. Luci realizes with a shock that it is his gang, but with faces filled with joy and cleaned of war paint. Klowdy catches her eye and wanders over.

"Hey," he says nonchalantly. A hand-rolled cigarette in his mouth seems to not experience gravity and keeps trying to float away.

"Hey," Luci responds, her neck craning around. "This is beautiful. How long have you been Dreaming?" she asks, meaning how long has he become lucid in the Astral Plane.

"Oh for years now," the elf explains, peeling a tangerine. "It's the only place I can relax, let my guard down a little."

A young dwarf boy pulls a wagon of laughing elf children over the cobblestone road.

"I can understand that," says Luci, her eyes unfocusing, her mind going somewhere else for a moment.

"But you," Klowdy says "You're something else. You're a Native. You're a fish in water."

Luci shifts. "It reminds me of home."

Luci pauses. A young Ewok presses something into her hand. It's a glowing chrysanthemum.

"So," she says "You can dream of anything, and this is what you choose?"

Klowdy nods solemnly. Luci nods back, and looks at the flower in her hand.

"It's a good dream, Klowdy," she tells him. "It could be better."

"You're talkative all of a sudden," he says, bemused. "I don't recall asking for a critique, but since you're so chatty, why don't you tell me what would you do to make this dream better?"

Luci pulls him close.

***

***

Luci and the elves rise with determination in their eyes. Nobody exchanges any meaningful glances indicating anything other than a restful night's sleep occurred for any of them. The four set off in a new vehicle of Luci's design, a black sedan with tinted windows. They do not speak, but sit in silence and smoke cigarettes and ayahuasca, thinking. There is no joking today, and everyone knows the plan word for word.

***

Luci watches from a bus station on Teir-3 as everything goes wrong.

"Fuck," says Klowdy, as he is want to do. The four of them, Luci and the elves, are watching five identical white vans hit the sky highway IT-35 below them. Five vans. Not one. Five. "Fuck," Klowdy repeats. A pretty orc girl sprints up to them.

"Klowdy!" she says in a deep but feminine voice, taking panting breaths. "Klowdy, they brought decoys!" She tells him hurriedly. Klowdy points to the five vans.

"Yeah, we noticed. See if you can find out where Ognok is, call me as soon as you know," the elf tells her. The orc girl nods, gives Luci a strange look, and runs off.

Luci stares at Klowdy.

"What?" the elf asks.

Luci stares at Klowdy.

"What? Look, she's just sympathetic to the cause," he says casually.

Luci stares at Klowdy.

"She's just a freind," he adds sheepishly.

Luci stares at Klowdy.

"Enough of that shit! Get your head in the game!" Klowdy snaps. "Here's the plan-" he says.

Luci rolls her eyes and jumps off the bus-stop into open air.

***

Luci extends her arms like she's diving. She looks ahead vaguely to make sure she's still on target, and sure enough the fat white van is below her, in front of its four friends. She takes a deep breath and turns transparent as she dives smoothly though the hood. She immediately exhales all her breath, becoming solid and landing in the back of cargo van in a roll.

Luci moans in main while the hover-van is rocked, swerving wildly. She looks up and sees the van is empty except for the two orcs in front, one of whom is driving while the other aims a gun at her. Luci jumps up though the top of the van again just as a bolt of blue fire burns a hole where she was standing. She hurriedly paints a big red 'X' on the top of the van, and then jumps off the back, phasing through the windshield of the still-moving van behind it.

Luci zips past the two confused orcs in the cab and though a second empty van. By the time the passenger readies his weapon Luci is already gone, leaving behind nothing but another red 'X' on the top of the second van.

Luci sees that the orc riding shotgun in van three looks very angry, very armed, and very aware of her existence. She hops over his cab and lands on his roof as a bolt of blue fire rips the windshield off from the inside. Luci phases through the hood and into a cargo hold filled with boxes. Luci promptly knocks a box over, and a glittering orb of electricity crashes to the floor. She phases through the bottom of the van as the orc riding shotgun fires another blast, nearly taking her head off. She catches hold of the tailpipe with her left hand, and using her right hand spray-paints a big green check mark on the side of the van.

Immediately the van is rocked with arrows. The other vans fire shots wildly up into Teir-3. Civilians scream and fall, but Klowdy and his gang cannot be found. Another volley hits the van, which starts to swerve. The back door of the van Luci is grabbing is kicked open. The growling orc level his gun square in Luci's face, and Luci lets go.

The orc fires after her, but misses, and eventually turns his fire on Klowdy.

Luci falls.

She is a hundred feet up with nothing to grab. She is not looking forward to this.

Luci takes as deep a breath as she can right before she hits the gound. She phases through it, diving deep into the earth. It was dark.

Her momentum was slowed, but not by much, less than it would be through water, but it was slowed. Luci held her breath as she slowly stopped falling, and then kicked desperately to push herself to the surface. Luci was very fast. She was faster than the fastest car in Coruscant. But she is not sure she is fast enough to swim to the surface before she ran out of air. If she is not, if she exhales before reaching the surface, she would become solid while underground. So she kicks.

This is why Luci hates the dark; when she is underground there is no sunlight peeking through the top, nothing reassuring her that she can make it. There is only darkness. Her lungs are burning, screaming at her, but still she kicks, swimming up towards the surface. There is a pounding in her head. She feels dizzy, faint.

Luci breaches the top soil with a gasp.

***