House That Nobody Lives In [Tyger/Dashal]

[Malica Drezyan]

HOUSE THAT NOBODY LIVES IN
Anchorhead, Tatooine​

The cigarra was finished. When a drift of smoke stung her in the eye, Malica flicked the cigarra onto the ground and watched the sand devour the ember.

"Stop slacking, human," barked Zanuuko, Malica's toydarian employer, in Huttese. "The customers are to come pouring in and female sits on her lazy behind. Up!"

Malica obeyed, peeling herself off the wall of the building. She brushed the chalk dust off the back of her shirt. "The last customers to come 'pouring' in were Sand People. They certainly weren't here for a drink," she whispered under her breath.

Zanuuko didn't hear over the buzzing of his wings, so he chose an ever appropriate response: ""Filthy human. Work!"

The toydarian picked at his teeth with a claw and hovered into the back of the small cantina. He went to clear a table in the corner to gamble with a few aquaintances later on in the night. Malica pushed the cloth door out of her way as sidled into the bar. She had on a brown shift, similar to those owned by other women in the settlement. It was the most clothing she'd ever worn while serving drinks. Her long black hair was braided. What gave her away was the lingering smell of cigarra. She went out for one every 20 minutes.

At 8:30pm, the cantina was desolate. The Eynron, the cantina was formally called, E__ro_, according to the flickering yellow neon sign above the front arch, or simply "the bar" by the locals. The Eynron had been named after a Tatooine constellation, but few farmers in this settlement were interested in knowledge that couldn't be harvested for profit. Anchorhead was a perfect place for Malica to lay low. Months ago, she'd left Mos Eisley to join the ranks of the famous organization Omega Pyre. There were a few pair of eyes searching for her in the city who had witnessed her go. If she had been smart, she would have used the rest of her credits to travel somewhere other than Tatooine, but this retched planet had a way of magnitizing her back into it's polluted atmosphere.

A family of moisture farmers rented her the small guest house on their land. Her first option had been an apartment in Mos Espa. Having seen too many faces she recognized when she went to inspect the place, Malica decided against it. Desperately needing the money, the family in Anchorhead didn't ask many questions and requested that she be quiet when she came home at night as to not wake the children. Malica agreed, charmed by the provinciality, at first. More of a ghost than a border, she slept during the day, worked at night, and shot up spice only in rooms she was paying for.

Tonight, like usual, the bar had less than a dozen patrons, all male, with the same complaints about their crop and their wives as the night before. The tips were poodoo, but they kept Malica going enough to stay in this piss-stain of a settlement. Clothed in their colloquial manners, the farmers and especially their wives gossiped. How typical. How boring. They didnt like the way Malica looked or that she prefered bars dirtier than the Eynron. Mos Eisley was taunting her to come back and get in trouble and for a split second, as she poured a regular his drink, she thought about entertaing that whim.

What remained in Mos Eisley? The ship might be gone, but the house was still there. And she still had the key code memorized. Maybe she could fence some of Cyrus' old junk for creds.

Cyrus...

A stream of emotion dripped open in her chest, soon numbed by a shot of Correllian brandy. The regular mumbled some form of gratitude and left a tip. Malica's fingers feathered the credit piece, contemplating whether to use it to catch a ride to Mos Eisley after closing.

"Eh, female!" Zanuuko hollered across the room, "Bring these losers another round on the house. They can't afford another drink." He joked, fresh credits tucked in his pocket. The gamblers laughed dryly. "So you gonna stay or you gonna go?" Zanuuko goaded the players and the second round began with a shuffle of cards.


@[member="Tyger Tyger"], @[member="Dashal Vance"]

 

[Tyger Tyger]

Are your garments all spotless?​

Are they white like the snow?​

Are you washed in the blood of the nerf?​

Ahto City, Manaan – Republic Space
The Fountainhead Bar, Old Tourist District

It was not an original scene, by any means. Milo, sat at the bar, waiting for the heat to rise up or die down in response to the trouble he’d caused but a few hours ago. It was a job gone sloppy despite his best efforts, and here, now, he reflected on it with the mirror of scotch at the bottom of his glass, while a local musician played Alderaani folk songs to a dismal tourist season and the resulting empty bar. Anything for a gig.

He remembered casing the townhouse, charting the ephemeris of the day-to-day – a picture of the target in hand. A Selkath. An unloyal kolto harvester. The customer called him Tyger Tyger. A lot of questions, but a simple end. Execute. Bring the head. This head -- here in the photo. He hopped hurriedly to the other side of the street with his smuggled rifle and rapped politely on the front door.

And when the door was timidly opened and he took a look at the fishperson on the other side, Milo realized that because all his years spent in the Haven for White Humans that was the Galactic Empire, he could not even begin to tell one Selkath apart from another.

The Bith bartender tapped his hand upon the counter area behind his empty glass, shiny black eyes glowering at him dubiously. Milo tapped back, a gesture akin to “Hit me” in Blackjack. He received his scotch with little competition.

As Milo shouldered his way into the room, the fish person emitted a feminine cry in an unknown language and darted away from the living area toward the back. She fell in a doorway as Milo was finally able to stop her with his rifle, and still she crawled, but lacked priority as a sudden commotion came in response from upstairs. He laid his DD-12 across his forearm for added balance, keeping the barrel aimed at the top of the stairs as he ascended. His head was swimming from the realization at how pathetic his research had been, and resolved to do better next time.

Reaching the top of the staircase, he leveled his weapon into a room on the left, only to immediately jump back into the hallway, narrowly dodging an explosion of scatterslugs from what was effectively a sawed-off shotgun. They buried themselves in the wall and even tore a chunk out of it, a few slugs finding their way just past Milo’s jacket to land superficially in his shoulder. He choked out a grunt and spun back into the room, blasting fist-sized holes into the selkath, presumably the target, cursing himself for not recognizing that he wasn’t the only person in the universe who could smuggle a weapon into a pacifistic society. He was seething from the pain, and the self-doubt, and frustration, and the sudden awareness that he had no idea which of these two were actually the target and would need to burden himself with both heads to see that he accomplished the terms of the bounty. He took the Selkath’s scattergun, clicked it on Safe, and tucked it into the back of his trousers, then made like the worst sushi chef in the world in carving away the Selkath’s head from its body.

The door to the bar slipped open, flooding Milo with the late-afternoon light. He winced like Dracula in its presence, turning slightly in the other direction to avoid the harshness. The new patron, despite having a bar full of places to sit, decided to plop right down next to Milo, and Milo could see that it was the rodian who had secured him a safe hangar for his ship, and for some reason, his puckered face looked unusually smug. Milo’s face, however, was not very happy, raising an inquisitive brown and presenting an offputting scowl.

The rodian said, “You remember the price I quoted you earlier, outlander? It just went up.” He giggled his suckerfaced giggle.

Milo found the fishwoman still alive and gifted her with the favor of a quick death, using a blaster shot to end her life and sever her head in the same pull. He tossed it to the side with her husband’s, the two slick ovals spinning against each other like a pair of coconuts. As he proceeded to fluff out a black garbage bag, he noticed there, in the room to which she fled, a small bathtub-like aquarium on the far side of the room. Bagging the heads, he moved to investigate.

Milo just stared at him. The rodian gestured to the garbage bag perspiring blood onto the floor like a guilty heart. “But I’m sure it’s well within your finances – Isn’t it…Tyger Tyger?”

That goddamn name.

Lining the bottom of the tub were children’s toys, too large to be accidentally swallowed, shaped and colored as tropical fish native to the planet, and composed of a spongy material to act as a stuffed animal for those living the life of the submerged. Amidst the playthings was a baby selkath, floating in place, blowing bubbles up at Milo as it stared at him curious, babbling words he couldn’t hear from a language he likely couldn’t understand, but he had a feeling he knew what the baby was saying:

Is your soul all spotless? Is it pure as the snow? Are you washed in the blood of the nerf?​

​

Milo just shook his head in disgust, in irritation, not quite sure how to respond with words. Suddenly, he had drawn the scattergun and pressed it to the rodian’s belly. With a pull of the trigger, he had ripped the docker’s guts out all over the barroom floor. With his other hand, he grabbed him by the loose antennae/suckers/whatever and spiked his face down hard on the counter. The Fountainhead froze for a moment, but that was mostly Milo’s imagination. The band continued unabashed.

I’m all clean, I’m all spotless
I’m all pure like the snow
I’m all washed in the blood of the nerf.​

After searching the rodian’s pockets, he grabbed his bag from the floor and made his way for the hangar, confident in his anonymity. The job wasn't clean, but it was done.

@Malica Drezyan @Dashal Vance

 

[Malica Drezyan]

MOS EISLEY
Red Sector

The house remained abandonded. The door was breached and what wealth Cyrus Alor'had left behind had been carried off by scavengers. Malica stepped over a broken bedframe in the dark. The house did not seem changed to her. The shelves were looted, graffti decorated the wall, and the furniture was destroyed, but this was the same house.

When she was 23 and newly freed from slavery on a Nar Shaddaa resort ship, Malica was chasing her demons with alcohol and spice in the deepest holes of Mos Eisley. Cyrus visited the house between bounties as Malica came during drinking bouts. Of course, there were higher expectations. Malica wanted an intimate academy to learn the ways of the Mando'ade. Cyrus wanted a home to ressurect a family. The house became a tunnel between these two desires and nobody really lived there, just passed through. Malica thought about looking for a light switch. She couldn't remember where it was located. The master bedroom, the one that belonged to Cyrus, was the room she with which she was least familar, although strands of her hair lay in the cracks between the floor tiles.

Was it her inexpirence or his chauvinism that, at first, kept them sedated when they were in the house together? It may have been her junkie friends or the shirtless young men who scattered from the front of the house as they saw him approach. It may have been the fact that he always changed thebsubjectbwheneverbshe mentioned continuing to train. Whatever the reason, Malica had stayed with Cyrus for several months and was beginning to dissappear.

A bottle of whiskey smashed against the wall. It dribbled down the lampshade in dissapointed drips. "I have nothing, Cyrus. Nothing." She gritted her teeth. He would not hear her despair. Her tight teeth kept her angry. "You know I can hunt. Take me with you."

"The battles I fight are not for you." He said as he took off his helmet. "Udesii, my child." said Cyrus. In his lion-esque pace, walked toward the bedroom.

"Smuggling for the Hutts? Killing borrowers who don't pay their debts? I was their slave for years, har'chaak! I know how it works! Those aren't battles and you are no warrior. You promised - " Malica spat, clutching the arm of a chair for support. She wiped her mouth with her arm and followed him. He sat on the edge of the bed and removed his boots.

One cage was like another. Cyrus was the prettiest post she'd ever been tied to and she was given a long chain. He never let her want for anything; the house was well equiped with amenites bought with blood money. He was nice to her and never touched her untiil she asked him to. She was convinced she loved him and wasn't upset when he mumbled his late wife's name in his sleep.

After too many arguments, they met in combat platonically as teacher and student. At the conclusion of what became their final fight, when she shot him in the knee, Cyrus didn't argue the rules. He simply stated "Mando'ad draar digu" and went to mend the wound and fix himself a glass of scotch. He was gone in the morning and left her the house and his helmet.

The gorgeous steel blue helmet rested on the end of her bed like a severed head. She locked up the house a few weeks later and didn't return until now, two or three years later. Dust had gotten to the house before any thieves did and if some gang kids earned a fat handful of death sticks out of the stuff, so be it. Malica felt she was paying it forward. The house and the contents were never truly belonged to her, anyway. She hoped there was something the little twerps had overlooked.

In the closet, Malica sat on her knees. Her fingers fumbled against shirts, sandals, a dress so out of style Malica let out a snort. She pushed away an old suit to reach a compartment in the wall, close to the floor. The code had been frequently changed. Malica entered a few combinations before finally settling on the I.I. (Intergalactic Identity) number of Cyrus' son. The safe opened with a pneumatic sigh. To Malica's dismay, nothing inside was worth any credits. An insurance datapad, holograms from relatives, a metal containter with crumbs of spice...and a datapad that Malica didn't recognize. The model was seriously outdated. Some old thing Cyrus had discarded?

The datapad was a decade old, at least, and Malica wondered if it would even turn on. It did, to her surprise and Malica managed to navigate the menu to a list of corresondences. Many were bounty contracts from ages ago, probably long dead by Cyrus' hand. When she came across the name "Tyger Tyger" she felt as though she had just seen her old dress again and let out an incredulous chuckle. It couldn't be...

@[member="Tyger Tyger"], @[member="Dashal Vance"]

 

[Tyger Tyger]

And so it would go again.​

​

What kind of docker would harbor a notorious outlaw, a hunter of men?​

​

How many credits to make him an accomplice? To ignore the obscenity Tyger Tyger carried in his hand?​

​

A bag, rank of death, that left red precipitance dewed on the floortiles when removed from where it was set. How much would it cost to turn his head? How far could it turn before it inevitably had to stare it all in the face again?​

​

Forever. The docker would spin in circles.​

​

For Greed made this whole town go ‘round.​

​

Welcome to Mos Eisley, Milo Nox.​

​

Your first desert in the many to come.​

Tatooine
Mos Eisley, Tar Mass

Dirt and dust blew over the Mo’ Moolee Rah marketplace, where Tyger Tyger had sought transportation.

He found it in the form of a teenager, tucked between two market stalls; to his left, a butchershop where caged animals lounged on display as indication to the authenticity of the purchased flesh. To the right, a slave shop; its shackled product stood around vacantly, defeated and dead in the eyes.

Milo was no stranger to either, Kaas City permitting, if not promoting, the sale of both. Though in Kaas City, it was behind closed doors. The carcass packaged in supermarkets, the slave ordered to your hotel room by catalog – the death and life, respectively, hidden to ease consumption.

It was as if, out here, the clothing, the flesh had been flayed off, exposing the truth, revealing it for what it was:

All meat.

The swoop-ganger looked up to Milo, then to the garbage bag he carried in his hand. Milo’s gazed remained affixed on his eyes, angered brows redirecting the boy’s attention to that which was in his best interest.

“Where y’going?”

“Moisture farm, about 11 clicks out.”

“Cost you forty.”

“You’ll get twenty.”

“Deal,” the kid settled without debate, passing Milo the only helmet.

Have you laid down your burdens?​

Have you found peace and rest?​

Are you washed in the blood of the nerf?​

​

The two arrived in a little under twenty minutes, the kid having slowed his bike a bit as they exited Mos Eisley in an effort to mitigate the sand’s carving up of his face. Milo dismounted the vehicle, removing his helmet to pass it back to the driver.

The place was well-to-do, maybe even a bit too well-to-do for the local area. A plantation set up; smaller houses surrounding the primary mansion, slaves out in the sun, manning the moisture machines or whatever it is moisture farmers had them do when there weren’t Jedi Orphans about to do it for them. By the looks on their faces and the state of their clothes, it didn’t look like anyone was having any fun.

Milo wiped the sweat from his brow and grabbed his garbage bag from the storage tow, carrying it in his left hand as he advanced toward the main estate.

“Need me to wait?,” called the Kid, knowing full well the answer.

“Yeah.”

“That’ll be forty,” the kid requested again, apparently hooked on a secret psychological satisfaction to be had in the number.

“Ten.”

“Deal,” the kid agreed, willing to nickel and dime all the way to that big Four-Oh.

Milo simply nodded, stepping up the sandstone steps to ring the doorbell.

I’ve laid down all my troubles.​

I’ve found peace and rest.​

I’m washed in the blood of the nerf.​

​

[member="Malica Drezyan"]