Destitute

[Rakaan Horne]

​

​

LITHIOS​

UNDERWORLD​

​

You can never get out; there are no clean getaways.

Kole might have said to himself that he was done, but he was never really done. You didn't get to choose. You waited until that life was done with you, and it was in those instances that you often ended up dead. So, you kept playing your cards until you were dealt a good enough hand. Until then? You bluffed your way through, you won some, you lost some. You floated in the water, waiting for safety, or you became the shark. The shark always won. Maybe that's what made it the vicious cycle it really was.

The HRD sat motionless for but a moment, his mind running rampant as his eyes didn't budge. The glass that shielded himself and the figure next to him was covered in rain, trickling down and into the abyss of Lithios after rolling from the landing pad beneath them. Something pink crossed his mind, but that's all it ever did; it kept walking.

​There was nothing new about the job, something standard. A delivery to some organised scumbags, the organised kind. It made Kole's synthetic skin itch, mainly because he knew they had nothing to lose from shooting the two of them. Maybe he just had issues trusting people. Maybe.

Rain became louder once stepping outside, once it struck against the top of his head as he ventured inside. There was a smokey atmosphere, you could hardly breathe; choke on the smoke as it entered your lungs. The music coursed through one's system, and the wandering eyes of almost all the club participants hadn't fallen on either of them for a second. They just had to reach the back of the room. Hand off a data stick, get one in return. Simple.

It never was, though.

[member="Arekk"]

 

[Arekk]

_______________________________________________________________________​

LITHIOS, ETHOS CITY, THE MEISSA SYSTEM​

UNDERWORLD​

_______________________________________________________________________​

w. [member="Kole Harper"]​

The job was standard give-and-grab: deliver the stick, grab the data, get out in one piece. A mediocre payday, but work is work.

Running the shadows is all about feast or famine. One day you're novahot, working jobs that allow you to eat at five star restaurants, the next, well, you're here. This one's a famine for the ages. Slagging fixer hasn't called. The money's used for other projects, and then some. Sinless and free. Free to starve in the cracks of a society run by megacorps who just want your credsticks.

For the first time ever, Ar'ekk brought someone on a job to act more as a tough mannequin that followed him around rather than backup. Why would a man of a specific routine break his own pace for someone else? No idea but the fact Kole had come as far as here with him meant something, he guessed. The people they were meeting were real scumbags, the lowest of the low in Ethos City. Gun runners and slave traders who loved to enjoy themselves too much with their ill-gotten gains.

Regardless of their status, the ex-Jedi turned slicer wanted the information that only they had access to: Schematics to new cybernetic upgrades that would improve his quality of life. People in the underworld would pay billions to reach this sort of information or even go as far as killing anyone on their way to get their hands on such intel.

"Hands up, idiots." A voice could be heard behind them, door shutting with practiced bravado. "Or we will make a soup out of you two."

Of course it had go to this way.

 

[Rakaan Horne]

LITHIOS​

UNDERWORLD​

​

Things were never as easy as they should be. Nor were they fair.

Come in and deliver an item, get something as an exchange. It could of been that simple, but it never was. There was a bump in the road, a ditch in the track, an obstacle on the path... a barrel pressed against your skull. It's all you could expect from a special kind of scum, no? Gun Runners and Slavers certainly had more than their fair share of kills between them, and to add Kole and Ar'ekk to their list was definitely going to be nothing but a fleck of blood on their colour. Kole, in all reality, had no desire to be turned into soup. It was for that reason his hands had been slowly raised, bent at the elbows and moved out onto either side of him. A deep exhale left him, one of frustration, but the kind of frustration that was in anticipation. You could never expect something of the like to go smoothly.

That damned music continued to course through his figure, the people around him continued to dance about, moving alongside one another in an animalistic manner. They hadn't a care to give, maybe this was something they typically saw. Kole wasn't entirely adjusted to Lithios, at least not yet. One day, maybe. His eyes shifted in his head, turning towards Ar'ekk in a bid to see if he was keen or not in turning into soup.

Eh, what'll Lyn think?

[member="Arekk"]

 

[Arekk]

_______________________________________________________________________​

LITHIOS, ETHOS CITY, THE MEISSA SYSTEM​

UNDERWORLD​

_______________________________________________________________________​

w. [member="Kole Harper"]​

"Huh, a stickup. What a surprise."

Not really a surprise, more like the most common thing that could occur during business deals on Lithios. The trademark of a dark, crime-riddled city where even law enforcement wouldn't even dare to help you simply because they had been paid off by the local mobsters and traffickers. When you're looking down at the barrel of a gun, time slows down and the clock begins ticking and questions begin to pop up in your head.

When will you die? Is it too late? What did I do wrong?

"I don't feel like turning into soup." Ar'ekk said while chuckling, almost too cocky for their own good. "Do you feel like it, Kole?"

The thugs exchanged glances with each other in a do-you-wanna-die-or-what kind of way, laughing in unison with the slicer. A groan could be heard as the realization sinked in that he was mocking them in their own game, something that wouldn't be allowed by none of them in this room. An exclamation found its way out of the fattest of the bunch, his body comparable to a Hutt or similar.

"Funny man you are. But we'll cut that smirk off your face with a sharpened blade, slowly."

Bang.

Loud enough to realize it was a gunshot, ears ringing as someone fired inside the little back room. Fat man thumped on the ground, holding his bloody guts after realizing he was gone for good.

It was on.

 

[Rakaan Horne]

LITHIOS​

UNDERWORLD​

​

This wasn't something that Kole had expected. Neither had he any desire for it to occur, but you never truly got what you want in this life. Unless, that is, you seize it by your own hands. Even then, it was certainly a difficult task. Kole hadn't the skills, the influence, the credits, or the connections to do such a thing. And so, he toiled in his own world. It was what he understood, and there would be nothing else that mattered.

He was able to feel the presence of something against his skull, if not just behind it. His hairs had stuck up on his neck, and when that bang made itself apparent? It sent the man wielding the weapon into a semi-distracted mindset. Attention fading for the briefest of moments as it ventured elsewhere, but Kole only needed that much. His head had shifted to the left, his right hand shot backwards, over his shoulder and snatching at the firearm.. Kole had yanked it forwards, thrusting his own head back to force a skull to meet nose in a painful headbutt. It had found itself torn from the attackers hand and into Kole's. It was one twist of his figure and a series of multiple squeezes of the trigger until that other man had found themselves on the floor and full of holes.

[member="Arekk"]

 

[Arekk]

_______________________________________________________________________​

LITHIOS, ETHOS CITY, THE MEISSA SYSTEM​

UNDERWORLD​

_______________________________________________________________________​

w. [member="Kole Harper"]​

One arm broken here and a neck snapped over there, Ar'ekk and Kole were succesfully able to dodge being buried six feet under by a bunch of heartless Lithios thugs. The business had gone to hell, sure, but the products and the money were still intact. The slicer would reach for both sticks and hid them within a pocket of his leather jacket, eyes darting on the nearest exit and scanning the safest route out of here, the perk of having a cybernetic eye augmentation.

"That went as expected, huh?" A feth eating grin surfaced on his face, almost proud of the mess they had provoked.

The thugs exchanged glances with each other in a do-you-wanna-die-or-what kind of way, laughing in unison with the slicer. A groan could be heard as the realization sinked in that he was mocking them in their own game, something that wouldn't be allowed by none of them in this room. An exclamation found its way out of the fattest of the bunch, his body comparable to a Hutt or similar.

"Let's get out of here before more goons show up."

 

[Rakaan Horne]

LITHIOS​

UNDERWORLD​

​

Kole had replied with the cock of his head, and as it moved to the right his shoulders had shrugged whilst his eyebrows flexed upwards. "Yeah." It sounded as if it was more of a breath than anything else, hardly even a word due to the failure in which to pronounce such a thing. Although, it wasn't as if it really mattered anyways. His Blaster was firmly held within his right hand, surveying the area around them whilst Ar'ekk's hands went diving into a pocket or two in order to retrieve the chip that they came to exchange. They came out with two. That was never supposed to happen. You couldn't blame them for picking up the second; that was their job, what they had been paid to do. It raised a question though... what were they going to do with all that money?

Assuming that Ar'ekk had the path predetermined through the use of his cybernetic upgrades and was already on the move, Kole wasn't far behind him. They had to move and they had to move quickly, for the mess they made certainly wasn't going to go unnoticed. It hadn't been by the patrons who had stopped, screamed, cried and hid.

​In the moment that Kole's artificial self had slinked through the doorway had he spotted what appeared to more thugs, more scum, people just like them. No, not like them, not like him. Kole wasn't anything like these people, or so he believed. He wasn't evil as these people were. This was a necessity, not a desire. He couldn't leave because it kept catching up with him, not because he was too much of himself. Kole didn't know what the truth was. He only told himself these things in order to set himself at ease. It hardly worked.

[member="Arekk"]

​