Seasonal Life Day for the Lost, the Bitter, and the Permanently Overdrawn

[Rixa]

Life Day is supposed to be about warmth, family, friends, and joy.

This thread is for characters who have none of that or are simply hiding from it at the bottom of a glass in some forgotten dive bar.

This is for anyone with more regrets and drinking problems than credits and friends.

Come sit, drink, and complain about Life Day together.

The cantina was trying very hard to pretend it was festive.

A string of flickering red and green glow-orbs sagged above the bar like they had given up halfway through the season. Rixa had actually watched them hang the orbs just a few hours ago. Or had that been yesterday? It was getting blurry.

Someone had taped a paper Life Day wreath to a cracked pillar. The whole bar was in on a game that every time a festive tune played on the radio they all shouted and complained until the bartender changed the station.

Rixa was hunched over the bar, elbows planted in something sticky. A half-empty glass was clutched loosely in one gloved hand. She stared into the drink like it had personally betrayed her.

"Life Day," she muttered to no one in particular. "Brilliant idea. Celebrate all the people who are not here to disappoint you anymore."

The bartender moved to refill her drink without her asking. That alone told her she had been here too long.

"You want something...cleaner than that?" he asked.

Rixa had been drinking Life Day Leftovers. It was essentially all the dregs from the spirit bottles mixed into a jug and poured over ice.

"No, another!" Rixa demanded. "This's a cocktail. Cocktails are fethin' classy right?"

"Sure." The bartender actually laughed at that and poured another.

Rixa lifted the drink in a lazy, mocking salute to the room. To the quiet figures nursing their own poisons. To the ones who had nowhere else to be and no one waiting for them anywhere better.

"To life day!" she called out.

 

[Kinley Pryse]

You've been hit by... you've been struck by...

Kinley doesn't hide from bounty hunters. She keeps them around for cardio.​

This place was about as bleak as it got and that suited Kinley just fine. She wasn't in the mood for a joyful celebration, tinsel and cheer and forced smiles. Life Day or not, the galaxy didn't pause its ugliness just because someone lit a few candles.


She'd just come from seeing her boss, Flint, and the encounter still sat heilavy in her chest. Words exchanged. Lines drawn. The kind of conversation that left bruises you couldn't see and no satisfaction in walking away. Whatever goodwill she might've had left for the holiday had been burned up in that office.

The cantina matched her mood perfectly.

Low light. Sour air. No decorations worth mentioning. If anyone here was celebrating Life Day, they were doing it with clenched teeth and a strong pour.

Kinley slid onto a stool beside a woman already nursing her drink. Before she could even open her mouth, the barkeep slapped a glass down in front of her, something dark, something strong, without asking a single question. No greeting. No cheer.

Yeah. Everybody was in a mood here.

From somewhere down the bar, a voice rose, rough and ironic, lifting a glass half-heartedly.

"To Life Day!"

Kinley's mouth curled into a crooked smirk. She lifted her own glass in reply, just enough to acknowledge the sentiment, and clinked it lightly against the air.


"Aye," she said, dry as dust, then took a long pull, letting the burn do what the holiday couldn't.




Rixa

A Smooth Criminal

 

[Allie J.]

​

[]

Hellhound - DeathbyRomy ft. Jazmin Bean
​

Tag: Rixa .. Kinley Pryse

Allie sat at the narrow table as though it were an altar raised to indifferent gods, her fingers clasped around a glass beaded with unnatural frost. The drink within was pale and colorless, non-alcoholic yet sharp with a biting chill that seemed to creep into her bones, as if the cold were thinking. The cantina was dim, from her seated position, and wrong in subtle ways; the angles slightly misaligned, the shadows pooling where no light should have failed.

Across from her, 'Z' leaned forward, his voice a low, rasping cadence that stirred the air like a whispered invocation. As he spoke of the heist; the vault that folded in on itself, the timing precise to the breath, Allie listened with a stillness that bordered on ritual, her gaze fixed not on his face but on the slow drift of frost sliding down the glass like some glacial parasite.

'Z''s words painted horrors not of blood and screams, but of absence: the space where Allie should have been. He spoke of narrow escapes and impossible luck, of alarms that sang like mad choirs and doors that opened only once in a century, and with each detail her grip tightened.

She felt the missed heist not as regret, but as a gnawing cosmic wrongness, a sense that fate itself had slipped its leash and wandered into darker territories without her.

'Z' finished his tale with a crooked smile, but Allie did not return it; she only stared into the frost. At last, she slowly looked up, malice and disdain brewing in her eyes, hidden only by her dark sunglasses.

"Tell me, 'Z', how did the kid, Joush, actually die in that heist?" Allie asked, her voice low and trending.

"And you and your boys left his body there, didn't you," she continued, accusation hardening each syllable, "left him to rot in that vault like an offering to whatever nameless corporate goons watched you walk away?"

'Z' stiffened, his eyes darting as if the shadows themselves had leaned closer, and he protested in a brittle rush that there was nothing to be done, that the alarms, the collapsing corridors, the screaming geometry of the place had already claimed Joush beyond rescue. He spoke too quickly, insisting the kid's fate was sealed by forces no blade or blaster could argue with, his words piling up like wards meant to keep guilt from clawing through.

Then, with a sudden, almost desperate brightness, he raised his glass and forced a smile, declaring it was Life Day after all, and offered a toast to survival, to light in the dark, and to another year spared from the things that hunger between the stars.

Allie stood, the motion abrupt yet heavy, as though unseen pressures resisted her leaving the table, and the frost on her glass cracked with a soft, accusing sound. "It isn't Life Day without the kid," she said, the words hollowed and cold, echoing with a grief that felt older than memory.

She turned away from 'Z' and the table alike, seeking a fresher drink and better companionship, knowing with bleak certainty that he had soured both the mood and whatever chill poison she had been holding.

 

[Rixa]

Allie J. Kinley Pryse

Rixa caught the clink of glass from down the bar and twisted slightly on her stool, peering at Kinley through the haze of cheap spirits and bad decisions. She lifted her own glass in response, crooked smile tugging at her mouth.

"Aye," she echoed, then snorted softly into her drink. "To surviving. Barely."

She took a long pull, winced, and set the glass down harder than necessary. Whatever was in the Life Day Leftovers tonight had teeth.

"Aye," she said, dry as dust, then took a long pull, letting the burn do what the holiday couldn't.

"Seriously though," went Rixa. "Ouch. I thought I was in a bad mood. Actually, whatthefuck am I even talking about. I'm in a great mood."

She picked up her glass again, managing to point at Kinley with two fingers before downing it. The drink hadn't become any better.

"What was it, job gone wrong?"

Movement nearby drew her attention. Someone standing up too sharply. Rixa glanced, but did not pry. This place was full of stories people did not want help carrying.

Instead, she slid her empty glass a few centimetres towards the bartender and tapped it with one finger.

"Another round," she said, not looking up. "For anyone who looks like they need one and doesn’t want to ask."

"If Life Day’s going to hurt," Rixa added, dry as dust, "it might as well hurt properly."

 

[Allie J.]

​

[]

Hellhound - DeathbyRomy ft. Jazmin Bean
​

Tag: Rixa .. Kinley Pryse

Allie moved through the cantina as though wading a tide whose currents whispered blasphemies meant only for her ears. The crowd, an unholy congress of humans and alien forms whose anatomies defied comforting symmetry, pressed in close, yet seemed to recoil at her passing anger, as if some nameless intuition warned them away. With every step she took, she felt the presence of 'Z' receding behind her, not as a relief but as a stretching ache, like a cord drawn tight between past and present.

She did not look back. To do so felt dangerous, as though memory itself might awaken and take on a life of its own. Her hatred toward him started to blossom, watered and fertilized, until she wished he had died, not the kid.

At last, she reached the bar. The bartender, an entity whose eyes reflected no single geometry, regarded her with a patience that suggested it had watched civilizations rise, drink, and rot away at this very counter. Allie paused there, resting her hands against the cold surface, letting the din of the cantina fold in upon itself behind her.

The distance she had carved between herself, and 'Z', now felt sufficient, though not safe; it was the kind of distance that allowed old truths to breathe again. Above the murmur of voices and the clink of alien glassware, she sensed the faint, crawling unease of the cosmos itself, indifferent to friendships broken or preserved, waiting only for the next moment to reveal how small they all truly were.

Allie leaned closer to the bar and spoke, 'I'll need a fresh drink." After a brief, settling pause, she added, 'And put it on 'Z''s tab."

Allie let her gaze drift across the cantina as Life Day reached its swollen, riotous bloom, the air vibrating with a cheer that felt rehearsed against some greater, unspoken dread. Garlands of alien foliage and flickering luminescent charms clung to the walls like celebratory parasites, while laughter rose and fell in irregular cadences that suggested not joy, but relief at having survived another turning of the cosmic wheel.

Creatures of a dozen worlds pressed close in ritual closeness, their traditions colliding in a haze of music, incense, and fermented excess. Yet beneath the revelry, Allie sensed the old truth humming softly; that the universe neither knew nor cared why they celebrated, and that this night of warmth was merely a candle held up to a vast and patient dark.

It was then she noticed two other female patrons, Rixa and Kinley Pryse at the bar, their silhouettes half-lost in shadow and glass-light, sharing a momentary refuge from the crowd's mad devotion. Allie lifted her glass toward them in an instinctive gesture of fragile camaraderie, the liquid within catching the light like something briefly alive.

"Cheers," she said, her voice steady despite the unease coiled beneath the words, "and happy Life Day." For a heartbeat, the toast hung in the air like a ward against the abyss, small, human, and utterly defiant.

 

[Kinley Pryse]

You've been hit by... you've been struck by...

When Kinley Pryse smirks, cantinas go silent to hear what fate sounds like.

​

"What was it, job gone wrong?"

Kinley snorted into her drink, enjoying the burning flavor, even though it was nonalcoholic. "Something like that." She didn't need to go into the story and drag everyone down with her. Eventually, another female joined the bar, and she nodded towards her in greeting.

"Happy Life Day..." She sipped her drink and wondered briefly if she wouldn't be able to make a profit off this little gathering.

"They say variety is the spice of life... but I know better." Quick as a flash, a small bag of spice was in her hand, and then pocketed once more. Those who wanted the burn would know what it was, and those who didn't weren't the ones she would pressure. Kinley sold her stuff all over the galaxy, even when she was downtrodden, as she is today.



Allie J. Rixa

A Smooth Criminal

 

[Rixa]

Allie lifted her glass toward them in an instinctive gesture of fragile camaraderie, the liquid within catching the light like something briefly alive.

"Rixa," she said to the newcomer. "You might have heard of me."

Her voice carried arrogance, but her reputation itself hadn't carried very far at all. There were a handful of minor bounties out for her. It was something she wanted to change.

Quick as a flash, a small bag of spice was in her hand, and then pocketed once more.

"Oh I remember you, from the races!"

Rixa leaned closer and whispered softly.

"Unless big Bregg from behind the bar is taking a cut I wouldn't flash those," she said. She still turned her hand up, palm open, beneath the bar for a hit.

 

[Kinley Pryse]

You've been hit by... you've been struck by...

Stormtroopers don't miss around Kinley Pryse. Their blasters just refuse to fire out of respect.
​

"Unless big Bregg from behind the bar is taking a cut I wouldn't flash those,"

Kinley flashed the woman a grin, crooked, playful, the kind that suggested she wouldn't mind if the Bregg caused a little trouble on her behalf. Still, her hands slipped beneath the table, moving quickly and discreetly as she settled the transaction.


Normally, she'd grease the bar keep's palm to look the other way. That was just business. But tonight was different. Tonight, she was keeping her head down, licking her wounds, trying not to draw attention she couldn't afford.


She rose from her seat and tipped an imaginary hat.


"Enjoy, Rixa."

A Smooth Criminal