Earworm

[Xyl'Myrr]

The haze of the cantina had long since faded beyond her notice, the cacophony of music, the trills of non-human speech and the distant roar of speeders lost somewhere beyond her own thoughts. Even in the seedy environment, the cyborg paid little notice to the comings and goings of these low-level dwellers, though she still chose to note each wary glance that was cast around the establishment. It wasn't an uncommon occurrence, for disputes to happen amidst these wayward inhabitants, a mere scuffle riling up to a full-on turf war at times. And especially opportune was the lesser districts for crime, a certain proclivity for lawlessness with the knowledge that the police speeders rarely dived down this deep into the planet's core. Regardless, the grizzled spacer had no worry of uprisings, though her own anxiety was apparent enough in a thoughtful frown. The last run had been unexpectedly, unsuccessful, and her freighter bore the fresh scorch marks to prove it. A tridactylate hand etched grooves in the table at which she sat, the rough cybernetics marring the surface as she brought a bottle to her lips. Whatever that Rodian had stowed in those blaster crates had obviously stirred the attention of someone, otherwise she wouldn't have had the pleasure of being shot at again. Spice, she guessed, contraband perhaps?

In the window of her vision, of what her cybernetic eyes perceived, she noticed that of a particular figure, keen to stick to the shadows of the nearby doorway. Just enough of them was hidden, though their constant stare held her intrigue well enough. It was always a useful attribute, that none could determine of what she looked at beneath the technology framing her face, and of course, she held that gaze just the same for the stranger. An instinctual twitch at the waist she made, checking the position of her blaster pistol in discreet etiquette. The cyborg was not unused to discriminating stares, but this one bothered her more so at the moment. And with a small quip, Xyl addressed the lurking individual.

"Why don't you take a walk pal, or you got something to say?"

 

[Kha'ro Ottosuki]

Kha'ro sat on the opposite side of the cantina than Xyl, he peered over and shrugged, he mumbled something to himself, "I guess the rudeness in cantinas hasn't changed during my meditation. He watches, curious as to what will happen next and ready to spring to action to stop a fight.

 

[Lysle of the Hydian Way]

Theme

In the lowest levels, in the abyssal urban depths, of the ecumenopolis that was Coruscant, it was a rare thing indeed to see sunlight. For the inhabitants of the baroque and gleaming cloud cutters, sky towers and superskytowers—the latter reaching as much as two kilometres high— the sun was something taken for granted, just as were the other comforts of life. Since WeatherNet guaranteed that it never rained until dusk or later, the rich golden sunlight was simply expected, in the same way that one expected air to fill one’s lungs with every breath.

But hundreds of stories below the first inhabited floors of the great towers, ziggurats, and minarets, in some places actually on or under the city-planet’s surface, it was another story. Here hundreds of thousands of humans and other species lived and died, sometimes without ever catching as much as a glimpse of the fabled sky. Here the light that filtered through the omnipresent gray inversion layer was wan and pallid. The rain that reached the surface was nearly always acidic, enough so at times to etc tiny channels and grooves into ferrocarbon foundations. It was hard to believe that anything at all could survive in these dismal trenches. Yet even here life, both intelligent and otherwise, had adjusted long ago to the perpetual twilight and structured environment.

At the very bottom of the chasms, in the variegated pulsing of phosphor lights and signs, stone mites, conduit worms, and other scavengers flourished on technological detritus. Duracrete slugs blindly masticated their way through rubble. Hawk-bats built nest near power converters to keep their eggs warm. Armored rats and spider-roaches scuttled and hunted through piles of trash two stories high. And millions of other species of opportunistic and parasitic organisms, from single-celled animalcules all the way up to those self-aware enough to wish they weren’t, doggedly pursued their common quest for survival, little different from the struggles on a thousand different jungle worlds. Down here was where the jetsam of the galaxy, a motley collection of sentients dismissed by those above simply as “the underdwellers,” eked out lives of brutality and despair. It was merely a different kind of jungle, after all.
And where there’s a jungle, there are always those who hunt.

Lysle walked hurriedly through the colorful crowds that thronged the black markets. A layer of smoke and fog, a miasma of narcotics, alcohol and decaying lives thickened the air. He moved cautiously and stealthily through puddles of stuttering neon light. It wasn’t safe for him to be here. Nowhere was outside of Neos Ciy and the courts of the Hutt Cartel. He slipped through crowds of various species—Bothans, Niktos, Twi’leks, and Humans—with few noticing him. A spice den opened up for him, in way of a concealed entrance. A thinly corridor stretched seemingly as far as the eye could see. Shady and less-than-honorable thugs rested themselves against the walls, murmuring to one another in intoxicated drawls. Orange luminescence shone between carved lommite, giving the wall the appearance of a thousand tiny lights that sparkled and shadowed as mysterious gangsters wandered past.

His eyes diverted down when an unconscious Rodian was pulled out of a cantina by two boulder-like men. He only hoped that the same fate wasn't held for him. As he wound his way along the halls, eyes averting towards his Nas-Tech Wrist-Mounted Datapad, he checked his current location and his end location. A tracking device of sorts to find ones way down in the hellish maze of the Undercity. The roof was suddenly replaced not by solid permacrete but grates that let light burst down from above. He felt a trickle of water drip onto his shoulder. He looked up, to see clueless citizens walking along the grated ceiling, unaware of what was below.

He moved through a set of doors, opening to a larger room. The venue smelt of scented candles, a pleasant diversion from the smog that filled the world. Smoky trails wafted towards the ceiling and out between the grates. Lysle's steeled eyes took particular note of the blood on the floor, it looked to have been stained in a recent brawl. The Rodian, he thought. That's when he picked the sight of the cybernetic woman. His eyes remained focused on hers, and he took himself a seat in the nearest booth by the door. Instinctively he reached under the table but found no button; he had a habit of doing that since Frida's Cantina, nigh ten years ago.

His eyes remained trained on her, curious. She looked like a spacer, and a spacer in a joint like this was either a freighter pilot or a smuggler. He could make use of either. He reached into his pockets and dug out an old crumpled packet of Cæmel Dragons, No9. He gently placed the deathstick between his lips and began to light the narcotic. The menthe deathstick blew out a cyan smoke as Lysle exhaled. The cyborg woman spoke up, "Why don't you take a walk pal, or you got something to say?" Lysle silently and slowly shrugged in indifference. He ashed his deathstick and took another drag. "Be careful who you talk to, girl."


[member="Xyl'Myrr"]

 

[Xyl'Myrr]

At this return of words, the spacer spoke not a word. There was little point in egging on a fight between some stranger down in the depths of this hellhole. One quick blaster shot and the whole bar would be alight like a rebel battlefield. Rather, she studied him, brushing the cool of her cybernetic hand upon her chin as she leaned back in her own seat. The blip of her vision, electronic and whirring in her head, took in with full effect the situation that had unfolded so unfavorably. A clink resounded as the bottle came to rest on the table's surface, her attention very much drawn away from her leisure.

A curious lapse of attention on the man's part, brushing a hand beneath the table of which he took a seat. He seemed of high nerves in that moment, though he steadied himself well enough to flick a deathstick between his lips. It was enough of an indication that this individual was well used to being in less-than-friendly establishments and she wondered then if some ill-fate in his past was guiding his own agitation. The captain sat unfazed in posture though the itch of anxiety that had spread upon her remaining skin had filled her with a dreaded annoyance in seeing this stranger seated not far from her own table. An involuntary twitch for her blaster would have started a gunfight, she was nigh sure of it in that instant. A rare occurrence, not at all, for a stare-down between patrons to occur in a shadowy cantina such as this. And yet, this man seemed far more of a dangerous creature. He was a human male, average as can be by her sights, and yet, a venomous air was about him as he allowed a breath of smoke to billow from between his pursed lips. The scent carried to her as it wafted between them, the cyborg blowing forth a huff of someone as bothered as a cornered dewback.

What manner of loathsome scum had slunk down from the upper levels just to give her such a heckling? It wasn't exactly in her best interest to find out. She was proficient enough, seasoned to perfection in blasters and quick scuffles. But, this guy seemed a bit more of a challenge than the usual vagabonds that frequently decided to brawl over a few drops of spilled liquor. Considering the situation, Xyl feared in earnest that some head of the Black Sun now sat etching his teeth around the cyan smoke of that menthe deathstick. Not a good pick for a fight, considering the later consequences that could unfold.

The fog of the drink she had could not mask whatever dread intermingled with the spirit of her own wiliness. Not enough courage was there to confront this individual, fearing misstep, and thus, the cyborg chose to exude a levelheadedness in return for his own snark.

“Pardons, then, didn't know I was talking to some bigshot, down in this scum nest. A credit for your thoughts or is it your intention to just sit there blowing smoke in my general vicinity all night?” she offered, a feigned boldness weaved between her biting words. A flash of a toothy grin was a white flag enough to denote her words as mere banter, hoping a bit of lightheartedness would work well to diffuse the situation between them. A quick signal of her wrist and a waitress set a drink on his table. “On me,kid.”

[member="Lysle of the Hydian Way"]

 

[Kha'ro Ottosuki]

Kha'ro smiles, seeing that no fight had broken out, he sighs happily and says to himself, "Glad to see that." He relaxes and looks around, comparing the cantina to any cantina he was in before his meditation, it doesn't seem too different, he mumbles to himself, "I guess time moves at it's own pace."

 

[Lysle of the Hydian Way]

Theme

The enigmatic woman answered with an unexpected amount of cool, “Pardons, then, didn't know I was talking to some bigshot, down in this scum nest. A credit for your thoughts or is it your intention to just sit there blowing smoke in my general vicinity all night?” Lysle smirked, and blew a stream of thin blue toxic cloud in her direction. A feigned boldness weaved between her biting words. A flash of a toothy grin was a white flag enough to denote her words as mere banter. A quick signal of her wrist and a waitress set a drink on his table, “On me, kid.”

Lysle slowly forced himself up and out of his booth, and moved steadily toward her. A gentle hand rested on a few individuals in the crowd and they silently moved out of his way. A wave of hushed murmurs swept through the patrons. Lysle sat down with the drink she bought, and reached under the table. His fingers tried to find something that wasn't likely there, but when he felt the curve of metal in the table, he applied pressure to it. The faint yellow radiance of a tranquility screen rose around their table. The screen was a rare touch of quality for a place like this, but one Lysle appreciated as the raucous music faded to a muffled booming. It seemed the owners didn't have the credits to afford each table and booth their own screen.

Prying eyes turned, and their whispers were no longer audible. He spoke as he stamped out his deathstick into an ashtray, "In my experience, the prettier a girl is, the more nuts she is. Which makes you insane. You're probably nutty-coo-coo crazy. It's not your fault. Y'now, it's just like... Everybody treats you different. You'll make jokes that aren't funny, but people laugh anyway. That's got to make you nuts." Whether this was a compliment or insult was not apparent, but his smirk had faded. His eyes were cold and dead, and there was an air of egocentricity around him. There were those in Wild Space who said his ego was larger than the galaxy could store. They weren't wrong.

Lysle had not always been this way, but two decades of great achievements had made him such. The founder of the Red Ravens, arguably the largest criminal empire of this era, he was responsible for the total annihilation of the Black Sun Syndicate, and his handy-work along the Hydian Way had earned him a suiting moniker. He was a notorious shockboxer in his early twenties, an infamous smuggler in his late twenties, and the most wealthy and powerful crime lord in his early thirties. They say fame changes people, but so does infamy.

"I recognize a spacer when I see one," he began to spin his web, he raised the deathstick packet of Cæmel Dragons, No9. A finger tapped the symbol of a neon dragon head among what looked like black reptile skin, "That's my logo, I bet there isn't at least one man - aside myself - who doesn't smoke these in this cantina." He pushed the packet towards her, "What I'm saying is I am a rich man, and I need spacers." Lysle leaned forward and smelt the drink, and as far as he knew there wasn't anything wrong with it. He gingerly brought the bourbon to his lips and sipped at it.

"Neos City routinely transports less-than-reputable goods to important clients, but more-over I need a personal pilot for myself. The job pays well, if you fly well. You won't need to fly often, either, and given if you would like a job, then I would allow you to fly for others so long as you don't skip out on flying for me when I need you." He waved his hands as he set down the drink, "And if you're not a spacer, well, I've misjudged you and I would look like an oxen fool."

Neos City was not a common name. To some spacers working in the Unknown Regions, and a few dingy cantinas here and there throughout the galaxy, it was a place of myth and legend. A grand city of casinos and redlight districts as far as the eye can see, and intense podracing that usually ended in the lives of many racers, or severe mutilation in a horrid crash. It was said to be invite-only, and it was on no galactic map. Almost every authority in the galaxy was looking to shut down the crime ring operating in Neos, problem was they couldn't find it. Furthermore it was said to be home of the Mirage. If Neos City was a land of legend, then the Mirage was an enigma within a legend.


| [member="Xyl'Myrr"] |

 

[Kha'ro Ottosuki]

Kha'ro thinks to himself, so that's what that guy wanted, and then turned further towards him to observe, accidentally revealing his lightsabers, he didn't like to spread the news carelessly.