*Two years prior*
"No," Aviina said as the green creature blinked up at her.
"What do you mean 'no' ?" Din asked in a tone that suggested he was speaking to a petulant child instead of his partner.
"I mean, no Mando, I'm not doing this, it's a baby." Aviina turned around and began to walk away but a small coo from the big-eyed creature stopped her. It babbled and reached its small three-fingered hand out to her.
"It's our job," Din said as he pressed some buttons on the child's floating pod and synched it together with the gauntlet on his wrist.
"What do they even want with it?" Aviina asked, crossing her arms over her chest and eyed the kid uncomfortably.
"That's not my problem," Din said in his signature deadpan tone.
This was not their first job together, but Aviina was still learning to read Din. After their first bounty, Aviina had proposed to continue their partnership and to her surprise, Din took little to no convincing. That was several months ago, but nothing could have prepared Aviina for the small, green, fuzzy baby that sprang forth from the pod, or the hefty firefight that protected the little bug.
"It just doesn't feel right," she said as she followed him and the kid out of the doorway and out into the Arvala Seven landscape littered with bodies and blaster burns.
Din stopped responding to Aviina's complaints early on in the trek back to the Razor Crest. Her sighs and slights of contempt reverberated off the canyon walls, making her sound infinitely louder and less threatening than she'd liked. Eventually, she stopped trying to engage with her silent partner and turned her mind loose on the many reasons their employer would want such a small and seemingly insignificant lifeform. As a pet? To eat? Some kind of sick and twisted sexual fantasy? The child was far too captivated by the dozens of small sand lizards scuttling around the canyon terrain to care that he was essentially being kidnapped, and even if he did know what was happening he was far too helpless to resist. Her stomach turned and she was about to protest again when the air shifted and Aviina froze.
She heard them coming seconds before they surrounded them. She extended her hand, a signal to Din to stop moving. He froze on instinct and was only able to shove the child's pod away before it began.
Three Trandoshans descended upon Din in a tight formation with synched movements to make up for their race's lack of grace. However, to Aviina the world seemed to be stuck in sugar leaf taffy and moving in slow motion. She saw the three brutish beings, their scales dulled from the sand, and their claws (razor sharp on their own), clutching weapons aimed at her partner.
Suddenly she was the naïve priestess again. Transported back to the stone walls and stained glass windows of her youth. Images of blood seeping into carved marble floors and the sounds of wounded women gargling on their own blood filled her senses. Tears stung her eyes at the sight of the Trandoshans' terrible claws and her left eye ached involuntarily.
A feralness took her over and her body began to move before her brain could assess the threat fully. Din was not caught unawares and was more than capable of fending off the slow, aggressive attacks. But Aviina defended him with such force that it took him a moment to realize what was happening.
Aviina surged forward and caught one of the Trandoshans from behind. She jumped, propelling herself onto its back, and clutched his head in her hands. She wrenched its head back to her chest and twisted it hard. After a sickening snap, the Trandoshan collapsed with Aviina in tow. This garnered the attention of another Trandoshan who swung his heavy metal ax downward. Aviina skittered backward on the stone ground, narrowly avoiding the sharp edge of the ax as it screeched to the ground.
