Private Cards on the Table

[Rafe Laroque]

Oh he was definitely trouble. No way she was escaping from having him try and sweet talk her. She was far too pretty for him not to.

"Katarine... I like it. But you know, for the sake of the investigation, I might have to come up with a nickname. Something… more personal.”

He'd have to think about that one for a bit. A good nickname was like a good wine, it rolled off the tongue and left a delightful aftertaste; it wasn't to be rushed. Not was releasing her hand to be rushed. Delightfully smooth, yer calloused like one who did work. She was not someone who sat back and let others do the dirty work. The contact also told him more about her feelings, and that she was scared of what had happened to her in the past when she was around someone like him. Well, sort of. He got the impression they were... Dark.

"Ahh, I see now..."

He smiled and patted her hand.

"I may be a card shark, but I'd never let you hurt yourself like that again. I'm Rafe Laroque, sometimes called the Jack of Blades."

ATTIRE: Brown Pants and Duster w/ a Purple Shirt | WEAPONS: Purple Lightsaber, Metal Playing Cards

TAGS: Katarine Ryiah​

 

[Katarine Ryiah]

I can't feel a thing from my head down to my toes​

Tags: Rafe Laroque

She tried to pull her hand away but he was holding tight, as if he was reading something through the Force. She narrowed her eyes at his next statement.

"I may be a card shark, but I'd never let you hurt yourself like that again........"

Hurt? It wasn't her who had gotten hurt, it was someone else. The truth was Katarine had reviled in her time on Zeltros. That drug of choice was a fix she couldn't get anywhere else. She woke up in night sweats craving it, even after centuries in freeze. Her body refused to detox from it, and if it had been her choice it never would have. Her twin Daxium had told her one time that she was never meant to lay with the hero who fought his way through a city for her. She was destined to end up with the villain who burned the city to the ground to get to her. If it was up to her she would have died on Zeltros, spending her nights in the company of a darksider and her days blissfully strung out, but she also couldn't live with herself if others got hurt because of her so she cut it off.

"Rafe Laroque... " Her eyes were still narrowed, wondering if she should scold him for his words. She decided not to, mostly because she didn't want to talk about it or have to deal with cravings. If she kept busy she'd keep herself clean. The moment she stopped to rest for even a second though her insides screamed in agony. No rest for the wicked.

"Alright whats our next move?"

 

[Rafe Laroque]

She was upset at his reading of her, but even if he hadn’t wanted to, he likely would have. Contact of that sort just kind of set it off. After all, he’d never fully completed his training with the Jedi. A few tricks and some random things he could do, but full control over things like that had escaped him. It worked out, though, because it allowed him a good ability to read people. He just had to be careful as to when he chose to touch someone.

He also noted she didn’t agree with his statement. There was a level of self-loathing within her for what she’d done in the past that wasn’t too surprising. But that didn’t change the fact that she HAD hurt herself with what had happened. Sure, someone else was hurt as well, but it was all because she’d allowed herself to be hurt first. There was no way she would ever get completely past what had happened if she never acknowledged the full reality of what had happened to her.

Patting her hand once, he released it, though inwardly he had rather enjoyed holding her hand.

“A good question,” he said, regarding their next move. “There’s a handful of other senators she’s likely to go after, but it’s impossible to say which will be her hitman's next target. Hell, I could be the next target.”

He shrugged at that.

“I can show you the list and you decide?”

Reaching inside of his jacket, he pulled out a datapad and tapped on it. Sliding through a few things, he pulled up the list of associated senators. Of course, the one who’d been murdered was shown with a line through her name. He held the datapad out to her. It showed the following names of those who weren’t accounted for:

Rynar Calvos - Adrathorpe
Maelin Sarros - Volik
Selene Arvan - Kelada
Malrik Thorne - Taloraan

ATTIRE: Brown Pants and Duster w/ a Purple Shirt | WEAPONS: Purple Lightsaber, Metal Playing Cards

TAGS: Katarine Ryiah​

 

[Katarine Ryiah]

Tags: Rafe Laroque


Katarine accepted the datapad and looked over the list. The hard reality was they really couldn't know who the next target was. They could wait of course, but by the time they acted it would probably be too late. If they acted at least they could save some senators, and hopefully get ahead of this hit man.

"I guess the odds are the same all around. Let's head for Kelada and hope the Force is with us."

 

[Rafe Laroque]

“Life is like a card game: you don’t know what you’re getting until the hand is dealt. Same thing in this case.”

She’d selected the senator for Kelada, which meant they had a bit of a flight ahead of them, and that was fine by him. Little time to relax and let their senator-in-hiding stretch her legs probably wouldn’t be a bad thing. There was the question of whether K.O. was going to fly with him, or if she was going to go and take her own transport, but he didn’t really mind either way. Be nice if she flew with him, cuz then he could continue to hit on her, but if not, he’d just wait until he could again.

“You need to go talk to the locals or anything before we go? And you taking your ship or flying with me?”

ATTIRE: Brown Pants and Duster w/ a Purple Shirt | WEAPONS: Purple Lightsaber, Metal Playing Cards

TAGS: Katarine Ryiah​

 

[Katarine Ryiah]

Tags: Rafe Laroque


"I will send the head detective a message and that should be good enough." His next question made her chuckle, mostly because she knew how absurd it was to have a Jedi Master who didn't know how to fly a ship.

"I don't pilot. It's generally a health hazard to anybody in the area, so looks like you are stuck with me for now."

She pulled out her datapad and started typing the message for the detective. This was tricky since Katarine was centuries behind on technology. It took her a few minutes just to figure out how to open the home screen and another minute to figure out where the messages were located. Finally, she seemed satisfied the message was sent, but still hit refresh to make sure it went through. Blasted technology. What was wrong with the old stuff anyway?

 

[Rafe Laroque]

A message was all it was going to take, huh? Interesting. Maybe these locals were more of pushovers than he thought they were. Granted she was a Jedi and they may not want to deal with her. He could understand that. Most of the Jedi were extremely pushy.

"You can't fly, huh?" he asked. "Interesting. Thought that was something they taught."

Shrugging, he turned around and walked out of the hold. No sense in hanging around there. If she was going to send a message to the local PD to let them know what she had discovered, or just let them know she hadn't found anything, then they didn't need to hang around there. Instead, he went up to the cabin and sat down in the pilots seat, proceeding to file his flight itinerary, which indicated him going somewhere completely other than their actual destination, but they didn't need to know that.

"Wanna sit up here or in the back?" he called to Katarine. "Might learn a thing or two up here. Willing to show you what I know."

ATTIRE: Brown Pants and Duster w/ a Purple Shirt | WEAPONS: Purple Lightsaber, Metal Playing Cards

TAGS: Katarine Ryiah​

 

[Katarine Ryiah]

Tags: Rafe Laroque

"Wanna sit up here or in the back?" he called to Katarine. "Might learn a thing or two up here. Willing to show you what I know."

Katarine laughed and took a seat up front. "Don't count on it. I'm absolutely hopeless." She was teasing but some of it was the truth. Katarine wasn't like most Jedi. "I skipped that day in Jedi school."

Of course she'd never gone to Jedi school. She'd grown up during the rebellion so the Jeid were not a centralized order. Now all these years latter there were so many Jedi but very little unity.

"So ... are you a member of an Order then? I can't keep up with how many Jedi groups the galaxy has now."