Let's Have A War

[NightSister]

RECIPIENT: Aria Vale
SENDER: [member="Onley Xiangu"]
Hey you. Colleague of mine has a job, something about an arms heist. Credits are involved. Won't be boring.

RECIPIENT: Onley Xiangu
SENDER: Aria Vale
I do like credits. Who's the colleague?

RECIPIENT: Aria Vale
SENDER: Onley Xiangu
Part of my cartel, guy named Sult. He's fun sometimes. Anyway, if you're in I can tell him to meet you tonight somewhere on Nar Shaddaa.

RECIPIENT: Onley Xiangu
SENDER: Aria Vale
Sounds good. Send me coordinates when you've got it cleared.

RECIPIENT: Aria Vale
SENDER: Onley Xiangu
[x]. It's near this dodgy dive-bar place that makes decent drinks.

RECIPIENT: Onley Xiangu
SENDER: Aria Vale
Neat. I'll be there.

[member="Elliot Locke"]

 

[Kenth Typho]

The perfect identity was like a good pair of boots.

No, better.

The moment you slipped back into it, there was this thrill as you walked through the streets.

Archibald Sult. He knew that man like the back of his pocket, he was that man and the farther he walked, the less Sult remembered what it was to be a whole different kind of man. It was like a bad dream for him, something best forgotten as the heavy rain saddled itself onto his shoulders and tried to wear him down. But as those boots - blood still marring the leather, mixed and brushed with dirt and mud - stepped off the transport and onto the street-side, Sult knew he was home.

Onley and him had hit it off right away.

That lad was too occupied with fancy showings, cutting faces off heads and the like, but he liked him well enough. Paid for his drinks, turned them over without an issue and had his back in a good, good fight.

What more could you ask for a man? Maybe one who did not cut off faces? Sult grinned at that, but brushed the knife in his pocket, that always seemed to calm him down in the moment. Today there would be a meeting, a short talk-to-talk, between himself and some lass. Lady Onley vouched for being solid enough in a fight and outside of it, he would have to see for himself.

But if she was... well, then they could get going.

The neon lights of the Golden Nugget was already looming out through the fog and the rain and the smog. Not a busy day, but just about enough to blend in, as long as your coat was pulled up enough.

Sult settled in for the wait once he got there, just outside of the rain and the wind.

[member="Aria Vale"]

 

[NightSister]

The bar didn't actually look all that bad, in fairness. Not particularly upscale, but not the worst choice of drinking venue, she supposed. If tonight's job wasn't requiring her to keep her wits about her, she'd have even been inclined to test that theory. But tonight she was there for a reason; this Sult fellow Onley'd put her in touch with was supposed to be meeting her somewhere around here.

She was still the slightest bit surprised she'd actually agreed to this. Not that she had any inherent problem with stealing weapons, really; her problem was more with getting caught and jailed for the rest of eternity. It was enough to throw anyone off, really. On the other hand, an arms hesit couldn't possibly earn her a life sentence. More than that, the idea, as it turned out, was that she didn't get caught; a much easier task when she was carrying it out alongside someone with more experience. Besides, she'd made a point of chasing excitement since leaving Voss. If going after weapons illegally wasn't exciting, she couldn't imagine what was.

Lucky for them both, Aria had enough skill with the Force to not have to rely on her general identification abilities. If 'none' counted as abilities, anyway. A bit of poking about in the presence around her, and she was able to retrace footsteps just quickly until her searching gaze settled on what she hoped to be the correct face. Just outside the bar, relatively tall. If Aria had been a better people-reader she might've managed to pick up on his slight air of one waiting, but she wasn't. That was also fine. She had enough to go on.

So she quickly closed the distance so she could address him, her gait wary and her voice low. The bar wasn't frequented enough, it seemed, for the two to be able to gather much attention, but no need to add to it.

"Sult, right?"

[member="Elliot Locke"]

 

[Kenth Typho]

[member="Aria Vale"]

His stance was relaxed.

The cigarette was hanging lazily between his fingers as he leaned against the wall. Smoke hanged lazily around him, suggesting he had been here for a while now, before Vale arrived. Once that voice filtered into his awareness, Sult looked away from the smoke and towards the voice. There was silence for a while as the man simply sized up the girl in front of him.

Pretty face, but they had no need of pretty faces where he was going.

Had Onley been karking with him or was there more to this cheeka than first perception would show him? At least her stance spoke of a certain level of experience, if not military, than at the least a fighting background.

Hmm... I know that stance, but it isn't from a Sith.

"You will do." A voice twisted lower from excessive smoking and slow, like there was no rush in anything he did- because they would wait on him no matter what. "Walk with me."

Finally, the intensity in his eyes left as Sult looked away from her and towards the alleyway nearby. He gestured with his head for it, before taking one last pull from his cigarette and letting it fall, being crushed by his heel next. He pushed up his collars against the wind and rain, before moving towards that alley. It was the assumption that she would simply follow.

No sense in discussing names, business or anything else wide out in the open.

Not even on Nar Shaddaa, hell, especially not on 'Shaddaa.

 

[NightSister]

Her eyebrows skyrocketed.

Not one for greetings, then. Or for...being polite. Was he implying he only just expected her to be up for the job? Most likely true, of course, but that wasn't the point. Onley definitely hadn't talked her up enough.

Well then. Apparently he could be fun. Maybe he'd cheer up once things were off and running. Or maybe not. At least there were supposedly credits at the end of all this. For now, however, she confined herself to an over-the-top eyeroll, and then she went ahead and followed him. Might as well, after all. She was getting the idea that she had a point to prove.

Aria tried her best not to appear unaccustomed to the seedy nature of the area. Granted, she'd taken the occasional visit to some ill-reputed places, but the cigarette smoke still made her nose wrinkle, and the lack of light around them put a slight caution in her stride. Still, she was trying to at least act as though the whole heisting shtick wasn't entirely new to her, so she refrained from looking over her shoulder as she ducked into the alley behind him, doing what she could to match his relaxed demeanor.

She stopped when he did, brow still quirked in a mix of incredulity and interest.

"Nice to meet you too." Couldn't help herself. "Alright, so what's the deal?"

[member="Elliot Locke"]

 

[Kenth Typho]

[member="Aria Vale"]

Sadly Sult missed the eyeroll as he was already walking down the alleyway.

Little courtyard behind the buildings, there were some loose crates lying around, garbage bins and enough shelter against the rain that this wasn't going to be dreadful crap to deal with. He pushed over one of those crates against the shelter, settling himself down after a moment.

Then he watched Vale file in behind him and watching him with some expectations in those eyes.

So, even if as an arse, Aria was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. All in the name of one Onley's vouch and the promise of a payday at the end of this.

One thing that surprised Archie... was that she didn't seem entirely too comfortable standing here. Oh, she was trying to hide it, alright and for anyone else it might have worked. But Sult had been acting like someone else for most of his adult life, so he knew the tells and the signs.

Because they were the same ones he had to burn out of himself years ago.

"Didn't say it was nice to meet you." Sult pointed out. There was a silence there, seemed to drag on for minutes, even if it was only a few seconds, before the man grinned. "Onley told me you were steady- figured I'd see for myself."

"Nice to meet you, Vale."

 

[NightSister]

It would've been really odd if he'd actually managed to miss the sarcasm. He definitely seemed the sarcastic type.

But he was being less blunt now. Alright, Aria could put up with him like this.

"Okay, better."

She matched his grin instinctually, somewhat mollified now. A brief sweeping look round the alleyway, and then when Sult sat down on a crate Aria followed suit. She was more relaxed now they weren't so out in the open - again, jail; not an appealing end scenario - and her stance was slightly more casual to reflect. Only slightly, mind. The alley stank of spices.

"So, I've got the gist of it." 'It' could remain unnamed aloud, she was guessing. Unlikely there was anyone listening, but Aria was taking precautions; no need to make herself look bad. "Any details I need to know?"

In truth, 'weapons heist' was pretty much all the information she needed. But still.

[member="Elliot Locke"]

 

[Kenth Typho]

[member="Aria Vale"]

Sult nodded, before getting out a small datapad and passing it over to the girl next to him.

"Caught wind of a shipment of guns passing the landing pads of the Industrial Sector." The guns were part of an agreement between two rival gangs. The arrangement would bring peace between them, making them stronger and that meant making them a bigger threat against both the Three-Eyed Tiger Gang and civilized society at large. No, if there was one situation where a bit of chaos would be better, it was here.

"As you can see we will have a short window, when the guard shifts change."

He pointed out the guard shifts, before shrugging.

"If we move fast, we will be encountering minimum resistance." Now there was some humor behind those eyes. "They will be too busy fighting each other to really pay attention to us anyway."

"Not a lot of trust between 'em and nobody should know about this shipment."

Which probably made it interesting that Sult knew.

"You in?"

 

[NightSister]

Eager, Aria shuffled and poked her head forwards to get a better look at the datapad, observing curiously as she listened to what Sult said.

So it was guns they were after, then. Well, it seemed straightforward enough. Doubtless it'd prove tricky, but at least she wouldn't be too in over her head. It even sounded relatively similar to the sort of mission she'd been given on occasion as a Shadow, but hardly very much so. Still, with any luck she'd do alright. There were always the credits at the end to keep her motivated.

But however well-suited she actually was to the operation and however well it paid, it certainly sounded like a good deal of fun. Fun was Aria's main goal nowadays, after all.

"Sure, I'm in," she said spiritedly, not missing a beat. Shifting to sit more upright, her eyes flickered from the screen back to Sult.

Um. So what now?

You are such a rookie.

"Do we just go, or...?"

[member="Elliot Locke"]

 

[Kenth Typho]

[member="Aria Vale"]

Sult blinked.

"...no, we are going to get our equipment first." He finally responded after a few moments of confusion. Onley had talked this one up by a wide margin, so the assumption had been that this wasn't her first shindig, but by the looks of it it was. This wasn't exactly ideal all things considered.

Usually he didn't mind popping a girl's cherry, but this was a crucial operation.

First, there was a ton of money involved, but second it had the potential of shifting the dynamics of power in the criminal underworld by a whole lot. It would give Xiangu's gang an edge, but would also minimize the gun pushing for a few weeks. At least until the dust had settled and the gangs knew what was happening.

But there wasn't much to do right now.

She had already agreed and to ditch her now would probably hurt Onley's feelings.

"Alright, come with me and you can borrow some of my stuff."

Didn't look like Vale had come prepared with the arsenal she would need for this thing.

 

[NightSister]

"Right. I knew that."

Oops.

Aria flushed, but made sure to keep her voice light. In fairness, she probably could've guessed that if impatience hadn't made her overeager; she'd been told she had that habit, after all. Well, never mind. She'd find a way to prove she wasn't entirely useless on the field at some point. For now she could laugh it off and cringe inwardly.

"Take it a saber won't do the trick, then?" she said, half joking. Hmm, she'd barely noticed, but now that she came to think about it, Sult didn't have a saber apparently on him, and he didn't appear Force-sensitive. When Aria analysed people at all it was mostly subconscious - she hardly cross-examined strangers to determine their sensitivity, alignment and strength; she wasn't near cynical enough to feel the need for such tricks - but brought to the front of her mind, she swiftly became aware of not having picked up a Force-signature. So that either made him non-Force-sensitive or skilled enough to hide it. She'd feel better about it thinking it was the former, though, so she did.

Putting that to one side for the time being, Aria followed Sult again, relatively quiet as was her nature. They weren't far from the safe house he was leading to, and she reached a stop quickly, looking at the building from a few feet away with her eyebrows raised a fraction.

"Fancy."

[member="Elliot Locke"]

 

[Kenth Typho]

[member="Aria Vale"]

Sult snorted, but then nodded.

"Yeah. The Sith Lord owning the place had good taste."

Had good taste.

But that was the entire thing about forcers. They thought themselves invincible, but more often than not all it took was a quick cut across the throat to kill 'em dead and keep it that way. Sometimes you had to take extra precautions, if they were the sort that came back, then it could get complicated real fast.

Thankfully there weren't a lot of those.

The keycard slide across the scanner and the door hissed open. Security, reinforced metal, the whole nine yards. The inside was clean, meticulous and organized.

Just as Sult was, really.

"Make yourself at home. There's food in the kitchen, probably also some drinks, I am gonna go check on something."

 

[NightSister]

"Sith Lord, huh?"

She tried not to look impressed at the secret door something-or-other.

Pretty cool. The Shadows'd had some similarly fancy bases, but Aria had rarely gotten to see them, Padawans being lower-authority and all the rest. Besides, they were specifically Jedi Shadows, and Aria's aversion to all things Jedi still stood. Even when it came to secret doors.

Aria stood for a moment, looking from Sult to the rest of the safe house. It wouldn't hurt to look around, but she wasn't, after all, here to lounge around and socialize, thank the heavens. A drink sounded tempting, but there was a job to be done.

Well, she did know a bit about weapons. Perhaps unsurprising of a Force-user, she liked to rely on her saber if a tangible weapon was needed at all, but she did know a bit. At least enough that she could pick out a blaster without basing her choice on how big and scary it looked, anyways. So with a moment's deliberation, she went on down to the basement Sult had disappeared into.

"Nice," she commented simply, looking around.

[member="Elliot Locke"]

 

[Kenth Typho]

[member="Aria Vale"]

The basement wasn't much to look at.

Just a bunch of barrels, crates and a table off in the corner with some equipment on it. Mostly stuff you could use to repair your speeder or some such, but that wasn't the draw of the basement. Not to Sult anyway, he had far more... raw interests and one of them was a little button behind one of the crates.

A part of the wall came away, revealing solid turadium and another scanner for his hand.

"Hmm?" Sult looked over his shoulder to Vale. It hadn't really been the point for her to come around and see all of this, but at the same time this was only one of many safehouses across the Galaxy.

Didn't matter much if this one was karked, if she turned out to be not on the level.

"Wait 'til you get inside."

Inside there was a lot of pretty things to be found.

 

[NightSister]

She sailed through the second opening when he scanned it open, deciding against there being any point in checking that Sult was alright with it. Evidently, she'd taken make yourself at home to heart.

Her gaze swept momentarily across the unveiled armory. He certainly had a good range of weapons stored here, at least as far as Aria was concerned. There'd be something she could handle alright, anyway. Aria was alright with a gun, if you were being generous, but she liked to think she was a fast learner. At any rate, something small and relatively light would do nicely.

Another quick look around to pinpoint where to start, and Aria crossed the distance to a row of blasters on a shelf, lifting each in turn experimentally - still yet to try and confirm that she was within bounds. Oh well.

She settled after a few moments on a nice little blaster pistol.

"What's the danger level, d'you think?" she called over her shoulder. "How armed do we need to be?"

[member="Elliot Locke"]

 

[Kenth Typho]

[member="Aria Vale"]

Sult did not look up from the vast array of knives on display.

"This deal gonna make or break a coalition that could overtake Nar Shaddaa." The man replied absent-mindedly while feeling the weight of each blade in his hand, playing with it here and there, testing the edge with a practiced ease. Sure, there would be more need for blasters, guns and maybe a few bombs here and there, but at the end of the day... if you got too close? There was nothing quite like the feel of shoving a monofilament short blade into someone's chest, right through the gorram body armor and feeling them bleed on your hand.

There was just something right about it.

"Pack yourself up, get a few of the explosives left from you, we will need to be smart about this, if we are to succeed."

Didn't say anything about survival- which either meant that Sult didn't want his new partner-in-crime to worry too much or that he already considered a foregone conclusion that they would. It wasn't clear if the latter was necessarily better, considering the odds they were gonna be up against. It could mean that he had too much faith in himself or was just generally crazy.

Or just that good.

He started stripped off his jacket, before looking over the vests that would hopefully take up some of the fire they'd be up against.

 

[NightSister]

Overtaking Nar Shaddaa? A big deal, then. He hadn't been too clear on the danger level - specifically, how likely it was they'd end up killed off or caught - but Aria could make an educated guess.

She took the liberty of further browsing. One blaster would do the job fine, but he'd pointed out to bring explosives, and a knife for good measure wouldn't hurt. With that in mind, she picked out both; a handful grenades and a knife, small and easy to conceal. Nothing that'd be tricky to use, even with her being as inexperienced as she was trying to pretend she wasn't.

Her eyes flickered back to Sult; oh yes, and a vest would be a good idea too, she supposed. Potential heavy fire and so on. So she sorted through her options quickly, then unzipped her jacket and switched it for a suitable vest. Comfortable enough, she supposed. Ever the avoider, she cared more for not getting shot at than for being protected against said shooting, but both was just as good.

"Alright, I'm set." Probably. "Anything else we need, or do we go now?"

[member="Elliot Locke"]

 

[Kenth Typho]

[member="Aria Vale"]

He eyed her up for a moment, before shrugging.

"Dunno about you, but I am hungry." Sult responded after grabbing another knife and making it disappear. "Never kill on a completely empty stomach."

Gotta find that balance.

If you killed on an empty stomach, it could start churning by the scent of copper and slick in the air, but if it was too full then you were gonna throw up within the first few minutes. Neither was ideal, but if you found that sweet spot, where you build a little foundation with some good food?

You could fight longer and be less worried about throwing over your breakfast.

"I already did a scouting of the zone, so we will have enough time for some food, before we actually do the job."

Would only go down in about two hours anyway- not enough time for some shut-eye, but enough time for some meat.

Sult didn't wait for her, if she wanted to play around with his knives some, he wouldn't hold it against her. But himself? The man went out the room, up the stairs back into main level, before slipping into the kitchen. There was enough food to make a glorious dinner, but that would probably be a bit much.

Mmm, the cheese smelled good though.

 

[NightSister]

The word 'kill' got a raised eyebrow out of her. All things taken into account, Aria didn't do an awful lot of killing - she had been taught against it all her life, after all - but if needs be, she wasn't necessarily averse to it, she supposed. Especially not after Midvinter. She still treated the matter with a certain caution, but not necessarily averse.

But now that she thought about it, she was rather peckish.

So she drifted upstairs and into the kitchen after him, looking around in her usual glance about. Alright, she wasn't all that hungry; she could throw together a sandwich, that'd tide her over until after all the action.

She poked about the kitchen, swinging open drawers and the fridge door looking for what she needed. The fridge was well-stocked; she imagined Sult hung about here a lot. Interesting. Well, not particularly, but she supposed it meant something if you thought about it long and hard enough.

Meanwhile, she liked awkward silence even less than she liked awkward conversation.

"So how'd you meet Onley?"

[member="Elliot Locke"]

 

[Kenth Typho]

[member="Aria Vale"]

Eggs... eggs... where were the eggs?

Took him a few seconds, before Sult realized they were behind the orange juice this time around, he carefully picked them out of the refrigerator and then shrugged.

"Was eating at a food stall, when some mooks decided to ambush him." A pan was fished out of the cabinets and put on the table, while thinking about those events. Funny how it turned around in the end. Those idiots hadn't had a clue who they were dealing with, even with their second ambush.

"Two of 'em ran over the food stall - my favorite one - before I knew it, they were trying to attack me."

He shrugged and broke the eggs, shells to the side and the substance in the pan.

"I killed them, Onley liked what he had seen, rest is history."

Of course, Sult didn't mention he had saved Xiangu's life. Wasn't the point of the story, hell, it didn't concern this lady anyway. All it would do was give her silly ideas.

"What about you?" The eggs started to sizzle.