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Just a few days ago Crik was flying his scouting cruiser across the 32nd quadrant on his way to the newest Death Star, when suddenly everything went black. When he came to again he found himself and his ship landed in a forest on this planet. He and his droid, BB-69, did some scouting around and found they were on a primitive agricultural planet, though not one that was on any of his maps. He would have flown off, but his ship was somehow out of fuel.

Eventually, the two had found a much larger city full of people and Crik managed to befriend a young boy of roughly 10 years named Alix. Without a way off, Alix managed to give Crik a disguise so he could scout the city without much worry. The people here were very suspicious of outsiders and didn’t know of any other planets in the Galaxy, if they caught Crik or BB-69, they’d definitely be killed. This was eventually confirmed when Crik saw them burning a woman at the stake for performing a magic trick for her children, it was such an amazing trick she just had to be a witch. Even her kids were burned for possibly being descendants of a witch. Not a nice place.

Today was the second day since they became stranded, Crik deciding he needed to go to the city to gather intel, try to find out where this planet was and what star it orbited, while BB-69 sent out a general distress signal to the First Order and any ships in the surrounding area. A risky move, for sure, but a necessary one. Alix volunteered to stay with and protect BB-69, also to just hang out with and observe the funky little robot ball. He’d never seen anything like it.

While Crik was away for some hours, Alix was inspecting BB-69 very closely. Suddenly, one light began to flash a bright red, making the droid seem to get very excited.

“BEEP BEEP, VRRRRRRRT, TWIT TWEET”

Alix didn’t understand, but the droid rolled up very quickly to the small child, a blue light coming from its head into a solid holographic screen with a solid white horizontal white line. The line began moving up and down violently as a voice came from BB-69, a female voice that sounded strong and commanding.

“This is Captain Phasma of the First Order, pilot Crik, do you copy?”

Next to the audio hologram, another image came from the droid, this hologram instead showed a live image of an armored helmet of a Stormtrooper. It might as well have been a still image though, as the mouth section didn’t move with speech, the only way Alix could tell it was live was because the sky behind her seemed to sway slightly with each step.

“Uh.. h-hello?” Alix asked, not understanding just what he was seeing.

“Who are you!? What are you doing with this BB unit!?” Phasma demanded the small child she saw, rather than the pilot she anticipated.

Surprised and a little scared by the sudden violent sounding reaction, Alix could only blurt out, “I-I’m Alix! Crik went to the city, o-over there!”

Alix pointed behind him to the larger collection of buildings a little ways away, white smoke billowing out of a few chimneys, showing it was very much active.

“What?” Phasma said suddenly, very confused.

She looked around quickly but didn’t see anything that was on the comm, there wasn’t a tree in sight and no cities at all. Not even any building materials. How was she seeing this? Her tracker said the droid was just a short hike ahead of her, but there was NOTHING.

Phasma looked back at her locator, the closer she got to it the less this made sense. How could she be seeing this child? The droid was obviously working. So… how???

Suddenly something changed on the hologram as she kept walking. Suddenly Alix began to shake a little, tree branches behind him gently shaking. An ominous thud could be heard through the audio, but no source could be seen. The boy became visibly worried for a moment, only to be interrupted again by another bout of shaking, this time much louder and much more violent.

“What’s happening over there!?” Phasma demanded, even more confused and alarmed.

“I.. I don’t know! I-It’s a giant… a-a giant…” Alix tried to say in a distracted panic. He was looking off into the distance just behind the droid.

“BWEEP BWEEEEEEEP!!!” BB-69 seemed to scream.

Another loud impact could be heard through the commlink, screams could be heard from even the city in the distance. All of this stopped, however, as the video suddenly turned to static.

“What the… Damn it!” Phasma yelled, drawing her blaster and looking around, aiming around at the sky above her.

None of her scanners picked up anything like what the boy was alluding to, there wasn’t even supposed to be anything she saw either. Just what the hell was going on here!?

Phasma cautiously took a few more steps in the right direction.

This was it.

Just a few more steps and she would be exactly where the signal was coming from. But there was still nothing…. Just more plants and a patch of what looked like sand…

Frustrated, Phasma pulled up her communications again, trying to re-establish a link to the droid. For a moment it only said “no signal”, but soon a connection was made.

This time it was different. The image came in more blurry than last time, with a glaring crack in the camera lens. All she could see was Alix with his back up against Crik’s ship, staring at something in absolute terror. It wasn’t until the droid turned around that could see what the panic was all about.

Far ahead above the treeline was a large metal wall that curved gently forming a boot that looked just like Phasma’s.

“What the hell…?” Phasma said in a fleeting voice.

She looked down at the ground, right where at the area where the signal was supposed to be coming from. Right near the patch of sand.

It made no sense at all but… could it be?

Phasma focused her helmet’s optics onto the patch of sand, zooming in slowly on one specific point. As the ground seemed to come closer, more details came into view.

The sand began to take shape and split off into clear lines to form streets. The rougher points would become collections of cottages, and the larger grey clumps turning into castles and manors. As she zoomed in even closer, Phasma could see movement along the streets as thousands of denizens ran in either the opposite direction or towards the castles to seek protection from the great metal beast.

This was… unexpected.

It wasn’t a strange thing to find creatures of all sizes across the Galaxy, from the biggest Rancor to the tiniest Mitoclorian being two examples. But humanoid creatures, especially this small were nearly unheard of.

Phasma took another step towards the sprawling city, taking a knee as she did. The force of her calf and knee falling to the ground was enough to cause an earthquake for miles, her shin guard flattening another smaller village without her noticing, ending over a hundred lives.

Her helmet optics allowed Phasma to see nearly every panicked face that passed her line of sight. Every furrowed brow, scared expression, and just how they climbed over each other to get away from her.

This, along with just how small they were, made them seem ugly and pitiful, hardly even like the intelligent life they appeared to be. Still, this information could be valuable to the First Order.

She’d need to bring back some samples.
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